AUTHOR'S NOTE: I don't own the characters (Miramax does) or the fairy tales referenced in this story. I'm not making one single penny off this story. (pauses) I wouldn't mind borrowing the boys for awhile though…
1) This is rated TEEN for a reason. There are some very adult themes and situations and angst in here and some violence. It deals with rather dark issues relating to familial rifts and deaths of family members (if you saw the movie, you know to what I'm referring). Can't handle, please don't read. 2) Although there are religious references in the story, nothing is based on any real people or cults. They were completely fabricated for plot purposes and if you see similarities to any real people or cults, you are squinting way too hard, if you know what I mean. Do not try anything you see in this story, boys and girls, because it's all made up stuff. So, if anyone flames for reasons of dark themes or religious references, I'm going to ignore it because I've given fair warning. 3) The opinions expressed by characters do not reflect the opinion of this writer. See Chapter One for the rest of the notes.
10
There was cold even in the dream. For the longest while, there was nothing else in his world but that cold and that familiar, infernal darkness. The whistle of the wind came next. It caressed his cold skin and turned flesh to ice. Her voice whispered his name again on that breeze and urged him to wakefulness.
Then came warmth…finally, miraculously…warmth that brought life back into frozen gooseflesh and drove back the blackness. It settled upon him like a physical weight, a welcome burden at that. The warmth waited there with him until Will Grimm finally found the strength to open his eyes.
With consciousness came panic: He was lying on his back and that weight remained, all over his body, so that he could hardly move from his feet up to his shoulders. All around him were sights so unfamiliar that he was convinced for a moment that he was still in the dream instead of the waking world. Where am I? Why can't I move?
The latter mystery was the easiest to solve. Somehow, Will had been placed on the grass, and lay hidden among fallen trees and boulders at the base of a hillside. Someone had covered him with overcoats and, for good measure, covered those coats with what scant leafs, small branches, and dirt could be found so that the combination formed something of a cocoon around him to ward off the cold of the outdoors. Not far from him, also sheltered from the wind and hidden by the hillside, was the dwindling remains of a small fire.
As for where he was, Will could make nothing out of his immediate surroundings. From his vantage, half-buried and flat on his back, he saw only the fire, trees, grass, gray clouds above, and the rolling hillside which graduated to towering, jagged, and forbidding-looking mountains. There was a roar in the distance that sounded like waves breaking on a beach, but he saw no sign of the ocean from his current position.
Will groaned. He was getting heartily sick of losing consciousness and waking to bizarre circumstances, that much was certain.
Images from the recurring dream of Sister overlapped with fragments of real memories---they were real, weren't they? Will remembered a demonically possessed rope trying to kill him, remembered choking, and then what---?
Jake.
Jacob had come back.
Will struggled free of the encumbering pile of coats, dirt, and sticks. Snippets of memories were still returning and he still wasn't sure which were real. He thought he remembered harsh cold washing over him, struggling to breathe as something—a hand?---forced his mouth closed and pinched his nose shut. Water? Was that the cold? Had Jacob dragged him into the ocean for God's sake? Yes, that seemed a reasonable conclusion, given that they'd been aboard the Adalia and now Will was very clearly on dry land (Saints be praised).
He moved, finally shoving aside the burden that pinned him down. His limbs ached from being immobile for too long. He frowned at the pile of coats he'd just dislodged. They were dry. They should have been soaked from the plunge Will assumed they'd made into the ocean. Will had been laying here long enough that the fire had dried the coats and his clothing. One coat was his. The other he recalled was Jake's. So, Will had his brother to thank for being buried in that odd tent of twigs and sand. Of course, who else would it have been? Torsten and his men would have put a pistol ball in Will's skull before they'd have gone to the trouble of dragging him ashore and saving him from freezing. There were even stones, which had been laid in a circle around Will's shelter in a way that gave it the gruesome appearance of a gravesite. The very notion made him shudder.
Jake had to have got both of them off the boat and away from their captors. So, that insane scheme had worked. It had almost got them killed, but it had worked. Unbelievable. Will had a spotty memory---fuzzy and more surreal than the visions of Sister---of Jacob building the fire that now dwindled nearby, of Jacob heaping the coats onto him, of Jacob staring at him with a worried expression and mouthing words Will couldn't hear in his semiconscious fog…
Will sat straight up, glancing around. Where was Jacob now? "Jake!" He'd meant to shout, but it came out a croak with his bruised neck and parched throat. He coughed and tried again, with marginally better results: "Jacob!"
No answer.
Will tried walking, stretching his cramped legs, and got his bearings while searching for some sign of his wayward sibling. He climbed the gentle slope of the hillside for a better view of the area. Where had his foolish sibling gone off too---? He could see the beach and the rocks from the hillside. The boat had hit something---or was that a dream? It couldn't have been a dream…there was no sign of the Adalia now, but Will saw large timbers washing onto the beach even from this distance. Had anyone besides Will and Jacob survived the wreck? Were they marooned now…wherever this was? Scottland? The Hebrides? Will supposed it wasn't wise to should when Torsten's men might be alive and within earshot, especially after what the Grimm brothers had gone through to escape.
He glanced from the beach to the hill itself…and blanched when he got his first real look at the jagged mountain above. The mountain wasn't particularly imposing or sinister on its own…it was the formation of rocks at its summit that sent a fresh surge of dread into Will's weary soul. "Oh my God…"
The rocks formation was the perfect shape to resemble nothing so much as the sleeping man from Will's dream, from Sister's vision. Worse, the run-off of past rainfalls had etched a curving path along the hillside where he stood, identical in every way to the trail Sister had shown Will in the dream.
Seeing all this, Will knew two things at once:
First---this place was the lost island in the Scottish Hebrides and that mountain was the place where Desdemond's altar had been hidden.
Two—that mountain was where Will would find Jacob…God willing, before his brother found that altar.
Closer inspection of the nearby dirt path revealed the faint impression of a footprint—a recent one at that. Jacob's? Will wondered.
Forgetting his half-frozen, aching limbs and the possibility that they weren't alone on this barren, rocky island, Will tore off along the trail towards the mountain and that ominous summit.
The longer he followed the trail, the deeper Will's fear grew. Staring at the sporadic prints in the dirt, he slowly discerned that the tracks were not Jake's alone. There were at least three distinct sets of recent boot prints. One set had obviously been made by a man with large feet who had lost his right shoe, for the right print had been made by a foot in a stocking. It must have been Torsten----Will didn't know how he knew that, he simply knew that Torsten was one of Jacob's pursuers---and one or more of his henchmen.
Will ran faster, as hard as he could. He had to find Jacob before they did.
"Grimm!"
The shout accompanied the crack of a pistol. One of Torsten's men had found a box of powder and shot, still dry, washed up on a lifeboat that had survived the wreck. But Jacob Grimm's damnable luck held: Torsten's shot went wild and the boy vanished into the boulder-dotted landscape of the mountain pass.
Torsten and the survivors with him still reeled from the unexpected events of the previous day. Torsten had set out originally with two-dozen men to capture Jacob Grimm. Fifteen remained, the rest had perished on the Adalia. Jorn was one of those among Torsten's men who'd managed to survive the unnatural attack from that living figurehead and reach the shore. Of the fifteen, only five would follow Torsten any farther. The rest had sufficiently lost their appetite to pursue the unpredictable Grimm boy. By dawn the next morning, after waiting out the night and the cold on what turned out to be a deserted Hebride island instead of the Scottish mainland, Torsten gave up on waiting for any more survivors to swim to shore. If they hadn't reached land by that time, he figured they weren't coming at all.
Salvaging whatever had floated ashore---one pistol and dry pistol shot a miraculous find---they'd set out to find the Grimm brothers, on the assumption that their prisoners had created the melee with the figurehead in order to escape. Failing that, Torsten would search for the altar. It was a hunch, but Torsten was certain Jacob would never had risked the Adalia if he wasn't within reach of the altar's hiding place. Contrary to what Torsten had heard from villagers in Germany, he knew Jacob Grimm was no fool…not in matters mystical.
Torsten had picked up Jacob's trail first thing that morning when he'd stumbled across the boy's campsite in time to find the boy piling stones around what looked like a grave. Jacob had fled a heartbeat before Torsten's men stormed into his camp. In their haste to capture the boy, Torsten had paid only half a mind to what he assumed was Will's grave. No matter. If Will was dead,as Torsten suspected (for the boy had been chained below deck on a sinking ship) it saved Gerit the trouble of personally killing him, as his duty would have demanded.
He'd pursued Jacob up into the mountain that towered over the island where Grimm had marooned them all, guided by the footprints on the dirt path and the intuition that told him his quarry was close, very close. Finding him had been the easy part---catching Jacob a second time was still the hiccup in Torsten's task. The boy ran like a rabbit and, thanks to the map he must have torn from the book and kept with him or simply memorized, Jacob was familiar with this island and its hiding places. Torsten regretted not having found Jacob's campsite sooner. He could have crept up on the boy while he slept and tied a rope around him instead of having to chase him across this God-forsaken island.
The pursuit of Jacob Grimm had an innocuous start---it began with a mere note delivered to Gerit Torsten like any other letter from friends. It had been sent by Karl at the library in Heidelberg. That was peculiar in and of itself and gave Gerit his first inkling that this note was more than friendly correspondence.
The contents were beyond anything Torsten could have anticipated. Discoveries of Desdemondian relics were rare. Gerit regarded the chances of find the Altar des Feuer or its Messer as probable as stumbling across the Holy Grail at a wayside peddlers' market. It was good that Torsten had been sitting when he'd read the message or he'd have likely fallen from shock.
The Altar and the Messer found by a whelp at the school in Heidelberg? After the Society had searched for centuries in vain? Desdemond's hiding place revealed by a boy? Apparently, the lad---one 'Jacob Grimm'---had shown up at the library needing a man proficient in Gaelic to translate markings on a scroll he'd found. The words 'Messer des Feuer' were among the indecipherable, non-Gaelic markings on the scroll. Luckily, Karl had been the linguist Grimm had turned to for assistance. The whole situation---outsmarted by a lad---would have been humiliating if Gerit Torsten had been the sort of man who indulged in humiliation. He regretted the need for Karl to dispatch a lad with such a keen mind for the pursuit of antiquities, but the secrets about Desdemond had to be kept for the safety of all mankind and so Gerit had given the order to steal the scroll and do away with the Grimm boy.
Within an hour of receiving the note and sending a reply, Torsten had packed what he would need onto his horse and set out for Heidelberg…only to be thwarted in his quest for the Altar yet again. Karl had planned a swift and merciful death for that Grimm lad only to discover that the boy had fled the school mere hours after going to Karl for the translation. Grimm had left most of his belongings behind in the small room he rented, so his departure may have been as impromptu as Torsten's own journey. Had Jacob Grimm that much zeal for the altar or had he somehow known he was in danger of his life? Torsten wondered.
The trail of Jacob Grimm went cold in Heidelberg. The boy had been wise not leaving any word of his destination even with his most trusted instructors. Then, by luck, Karl remembered two words from the translation of the scroll: Flumen and tria.
Torsten recalled a city established around the time of Desdemond's shameful cult---Hollenstadt. It was folly to assume the scroll must refer to Germany, a place where the blasphemous sect had spent only a short time. It could have been any 'three rivers' in any part of the world, Torsten knew.
First, Gerit had buried himself in the task of finding any locations with three rivers anywhere in the world where Desdemond had ventured and sending word of Grimm and the scroll to colleagues in those areas. Then, to err on the side of caution, Torsten had sent word to friends in Hollenstadt, who in turn placed themselves in positions where they'd easily know if Grimm showed his face in the village. He trusted his associates to be able to apprehend Jacob. Gerit had no hopes of arriving in Hollenstadt in time to intercept Jacob and therefore did not try. Instead, after introducing himself as one of Grimm's uncles to a rather gullible teacher at the school, Torsten had learned of Jacob's family and---on a hunch---set out for Catriona.
By this time, his associates had found Grimm in Hollenstadt all right---Wilhelm Grimm.
They, at least, had confirmed Jacob's destination (courtesy of Wilhelm) as being Catriona, as Torsten had guessed. Torsten was almost to Jacob's home village by that time…and arrive again too late! Jacob had booked passage on the Adalia, which set sail hours before Torsten rode into the seaside village.
Boarding and seizing the ship like common pirates was distasteful to Torsten in every way. He was a man practiced at killing, but killing in an honorable fashion and for honorable causes. If the crew had simple let him remove Jacob Grimm from the ship without protest, the entire episode wouldn't have been necessary. The captain's intuition and obligation to protect his passengers was commendable, but suicidal. He'd been on of the few Torsten and his men could not subdue and put off the ship, therefore he had died on his ship.
All the time, the effort at the chase, the bloodshed, to apprehend young Grimm and here Torsten was---Jacob had slipped through his fingers again! Torsten had underestimated that Jacob Grimm boy…but how could anyone have anticipated trickery like Jacob had pulled on the Adalia?
Jacob's professors, in retrospect, had warned him. 'Fascinated with the unnatural, magic, witchcraft, and hokum' they'd said of the lad. 'Brilliant mind for it', 'Creative', 'A bit odd', 'Unpredictable', they'd added. Gerit hadn't given those admonishments any thought. 'Brilliant' had been a given—Torsten didn't need to be told that much. Grimm had unearthed the Messer and the Altar's hiding places, after all. That was no feat of the simple-minded. 'A bit odd'? How often was brilliance tagged with that insult? Torsten wondered.
'Unpredictable'. That was the phrase Torsten should have kept in mind.
Torsten paused on the trail and surveyed the mountainside in frustration, searching for a sign of Jacob Grimm. Where had that maddening boy vanished to? Jacob had been only a few hundred feet away and now he was gone without a trace.
Gerit cursed at Jorn, the one responsible for spoiling what should have been a clean shot, a clean kill: "Next time, don't shout a warning at the boy."
Torsten didn't believe in magic. He believed in God and angels and, to a degree, in the existence of the evil things spoken of in the Bible, but not in magic. Mastery of things unnatural was the domain of God, not within reach of mortals. 'Magic' was explainable sleight of hand and trickery. There was nothing mystical about it at all.
And yet he could not explain what had happened on the Adalia the previous day. It was no trick or sleight of hand that had scuttled the ship and drowned or strangled half his men. It was an evil thing Jacob Grimm had conjured and Torsten had no defense against it. What else did Grimm have in his bag of tricks?
The terrain around Torsten was an eyesore---desolate, miserable, and stinking of sulfur, the devil's own smell. The stench came from the steam emanating from cracks in the rock. He was in a pass along the side of the mountain, somewhere near the summit. Cliffs towered over one side of the trail on which his group walked. The other side of the trail was a steep drop off to the ocean far below. The cliff above them was not one solid wall, but rather was formed of basalt that had cracked into what resembled columns. It gave the cliff the appearance of being made of tall logs of rock shoved together. Boulders of basalt and other rock had fallen long ago from the cliff and formed high piles. It was those piles of stones, which stretched halfway up the face of the columnar cliff, into which Jacob had fled to hide from his pursuers.
Where was he? Torsten wondered again. "Jacob!" Torsten shouted, not expecting a reply. His cry echoed along the cliff.
"He's gone this way." Impatient, embarrassed at his mistake, and mad with the need to avenge what Grimm had done on the Adalia, Jorn gestured to the pile of boulders and tried to push past his leader. Torsten put an arm across Jorn's chest to block his path.
"Something's not right," Gerit admonished. The chase was bothering Torsten the more he thought about it. Jacob was fast and familiar with this land. He should have eluded them several times over by now, yet he kept re-appearing just within sight but out of reach of Torsten's small crew. Why? Did he want them to follow him? Was he leading them somewhere? Into another trap?
Or was he leading them away from something?
Torsten's mind suddenly brought back the image of that 'grave' in Jacob's camp. Jacob had taken care to make sure they'd seen it, had shouted curses at them for 'killing' his brother as he fled the camp….
"Jorn, go back to that campsite we found this morning. Have a thorough look at that grave this time," Torsten ordered.
The hulking man frowned. "And look for what?" he asked doubtfully.
"Wilhelm Grimm. What do you think? See if he's as dead as we thought he was." At Jorn's incredulous look, Torsten added: "Just a hunch."
Reluctant, Jorn grudgingly did as he was told. He wouldn't mind repaying Wilhelm Grimm for the burns from that cursed talisman anyway…
Torsten continued to survey the cliff, wary about pursuing Grimm. "What are you up to this time, Jacob?"
Jacob Grimm was exhausted, freezing, and out of breath. His hands and legs were scraped from his hasty climb up the pile of rocks, and while he hid among the boulders, he fought the need for sleep. He hadn't rested in two days, staying up one night to devise the escape plan and again the previous night to watch over his unconscious, half-frozen brother.
Surviving the wreck had been a close thing. Jacob had pinched Will's nose shut and held his mouth closed in case his brother revived at the shock of being plunged into cold water. Will, however, had remained unconscious even as they were pulled underwater. They were saved only by the fact that the ship---weakened by the charm when the boards had pried themselves free of their nails---had all but disintegrated around them upon impact with the rocks near the shore. Massive cracks and gaps had appeared in the hull, large enough for Jacob to swim through. In the chaos, Torsten and his men hadn't been in any position to notice as Jacob and Will surfaced or spot Jacob as he towed his brother to shore. Jacob had been careful to avoid the beaches and plateaus in favor of the shelter of the sloping hillside and the scant trees that offered cover.
Once on shore, Jacob checked again to be sure his brother was still alive, and then set about keeping them both that way. Dripping wet and shivering, Jacob had built a fire as high as he could without it being seen by whoever washed up on the beach not far away. He'd put Will as close to the fire as he could, stripped off soaking wet clothes that were no better than ice, and made a cover out of leafs, dirt, and branches that Jacob hoped would add to the fire's warmth for his brother was far too cold and the bruises from the rope were harsh against his too pale skin. Jacob blamed himself for those bruises and cursed under his breath again at Will's intrusion into his plans.
Next, Jacob had struggled---his frozen arms feeling like lead instead of flesh---out of his own coat and sodden clothing. He draped the wet garments on sticks over the fire to dry. It was an eternity, during which he was huddled by the small fire while the night air bit into his skin, before the clothes were finally dry enough to be tolerable. Then, Jacob piled his coat and Will's over his brother like blankets and replaced the shelter of the branches and leafs and dirt.
All the while, for the second, sleepless night in a row, Jacob fretted. With his whole heart, he wished to be on his way to the altar. He knew the rock formation he'd seen from the Adalia that day. The map called it 'Desdemond's Pyre'. It looked like an old man sleeping on his back to Jacob. It marked the hiding place of the Altar des Feuer. Yet, as much as his spirit yearned to trek the hill now, climb the mountain, find the altar, and bring some sort of closure to a lifetime's quest, Jacob could not go…not while his brother was here and in need of his help.
The worry was how to keep Will alive (and better still, out of Jacob's way when he did finally awaken). Jacob could not be there when Will awoke or the altar might as well be on the other side of the world. Will would never let Jacob pursue it, he'd made that much painfully clear. Yet, Jacob could not set off on his own until he had no doubts about Will's health and safety. Unconscious and half-frozen, Will couldn't very well protect himself from the human predators on this island. The shock of Jacob's trick, the cold, and the darkness would only keep Torsten at bay until sunrise, Jacob guessed, and then he'd be searching for them.
Jacob had guessed right.
Jacob's anxiety had intensified as the dawn had approached. Will was better. His skin had some warmth to it and color had returned to his pale flesh. Will's improvement was a weight off Jacob's soul and mind, but only a small one. Torsten would be looking for them soon. Jacob had nothing but rocks and sticks and guile with which to defend himself and Will. Even if his journal weren't at the bottom of the ocean, lost forever, there were not more ideas to glean from it.
No way around it---Jacob could not stay and wait with Will any longer. Torsten would guess that Jacob had survived…he'd last been on the main deck with Torsten abandoned ship. He might not know that Will had escaped, for Will had been chained below. In addition, Jacob had the Messer, which had somehow stayed in his coat pocket during the frantic swim from the Adalia. Jacob was Torsten's prey, not Will. If Jacob played fox to the hound, Will had a chance of surviving unnoticed.
Still, Jacob felt he should do something more than bait their pursuers to save his brother. He was at a loss as to what to do, however, until the first rays of sunlight struck the summit, 'Desdemond's Pyre'.
A pyre…
Jacob had done his best to make Will's covering resemble a grave by piling grass atop it and circling it with rocks and making sure that nothing heavier than grass or leafs covered Will's mouth and nose so he could breathe. He had taken care not to bury Will so deeply that he couldn't free himself when he woke, but only enough that the ruse would fool Torsten's men.
He hoped the trickery had worked, that they'd passed by Will in their haste to stop Jacob.
Torsten had doggedly pursued Jacob into the mountain, with Jacob being very careful that his former captors never lost track of him while still staying out of their reach. He had to lead them away from Will. When they were finally in the mountain pass, Jacob turned his thoughts to eluding them completely. He was very close to the altar now, Jacob knew. He needed to begin to put distance between himself and Torsten.
"Grimm!" Torsten shouted from below. "The altar's of no use, lad! You're risking your life for myth and fairy tales!" The man's voice echoed off the cliff, trying to lure Jacob into revealing his hiding place. Jacob would not be baited this time. He stayed hidden among the basalt boulders.
"You're the one in danger, Torsten," Jacob warned. "Beyond this pass is Desdemond's territory. The map spoke of traps from here to the altar for anyone who doesn't wield the Messer."
It was the truth. When he'd come to the cliff, Jacob had seen the subtle markings carved into the basalt columns, so faint that they could have been overlooked as natural flaws in the stone. He knew the symbols, for they were identical to the ones on the scroll he'd discovered, the scroll that set him off on this insane journey. Jacob had no particular wish to lead Torsten's group to further violence or to their deaths--if they'd only give up their intentions of killing him and Will. He would regret the deaths on the Adalia if he and Will hadn't been in mortal danger from their captors at the time, hadn't come within a heartbeat of death trying to escape. Jacob had lead Torsten's men this far only because the summit lay in the opposite direction from where Will was hidden. The farther Torsten and his remaining men could be lured, the better Will's odds of living out the day.
He dared not peek out to see if Torsten heeded his warning. He didn't need to—Torsten was every bit as obsessed as Jacob was. He wouldn't give up as long as he drew breath...which would come soon if he followed Jacob any farther. The fact that Torsten had come this far told Jacob that the man hadn't noticed or recognized the carvings in the cliffs and rocks. Hadn't noticed or didn't care.
Well, I tried to warn him. Jacob had no more time to waste watching to see what would happen to his foolish pursuers. The altar was so close now that Jacob felt its call in his blood and in his soul. He was so close to finally accomplishing what he'd set out to do, he couldn't risk failure now.
Grimm was right about the danger, and Torsten knew it. He'd seen the inscriptions in the rocks and the columnar basalt. They were, indeed, in Desdemond's domain. "You're in danger as well, lad! I told you before--this quest is only going to earn you the grave. I know what it's like to wish for the impossible, Jacob, to want someone back from the dead. But the altar can't give you that, lad. The altar's powers are a fable. Are you willing to die for a fairy tale?" Torsten kept a watchful eye on the boulders for the slightest motion that might reveal Jacob's hiding place. "I have an obligation, Jacob. I have to be here. You, however, don't need to die today. Give me the Messer and let me do what I have to do and I'll spare your life."
No answer.
Who was it? Torsten wondered again. Who had such hold on the Grimm boy's heart to make such extraordinary, ridiculous measures worth the while? The great motivators of life were love, fear, and guilt. Which was driving the lad towards his own grave? For there was no chance the altar could perform the miracle that was the basis of its legend. If it could, for the sake of argument, how was Jacob planning to make the damn thing work? It's 'miracles' were purchased in blood. Whose blood was Jacob prepared to offer? Certainly not his brother's---for, if Will had indeed survived, Jacob had already demonstrated beyond question that he was unwilling to let his sibling perish without a fight.
Torsten's blood perhaps? Was Jacob leading him to the altar on purpose---lamb to the slaughter? He'd underestimated Jacob before, but somehow the notion that Jacob would sacrifice Torsten in cold-blooded murder didn't seem right. Souls with the capacity for that sort of evil were revealed by the eyes. Jacob might kill to protect his family, like on the Adalia, but he didn't have the eyes of a murderer.
Who then? There was no one else on the island. Surely Jacob wasn't planning on sacrificing himself?
"Jacob! Do you hear me? Turn back now. Whoever it was, it's not worth your life," Torsten tried again.
A pebbled tumbled from the rocks above, bounced off the cliff walls, and hit the dirt not far from Torsten. Instinctively, Torsten swung the pistol in the direction from which the stone had fallen. He saw a blur of white shirt and fired a shot at it, but Grimm was too fast. He was higher up in that rock pile than Torsten had thought and the shot missed completely.
"Damn!" Torsten prepared to follow.
As he began climbing the steep pile of rocks in pursuit, more pebbles began to tumble down the slope. Though some glanced off his arms and legs, Torsten paid them no mind…
…until he felt the ground beneath his feet begin to tremble.
It was subtle; in fact he scarcely noticed it for a few seconds of his ascent, intent as he was on capturing Jacob. Only when the quake grew in intensity so that Torsten nearly slipped and fell did it dawn on the man that the ground was moving. The glow, in the color of fire, that emanated from the symbols long ago scratched into the basalt walls of the cliff escaped his notice altogether. Still, he would not be deterred from his duty by a mere earthquake.
It took the screams from his men, farther down the hill of stone, to make him finally stop and look back at them. They shrieked in terror as, for the second time in less than one day, they were attacked in a most impossible, supernatural manner. This time, it was not wood or rope that had come to life, but the land all around them that lashed out with deadly consequences.
Amidst the shaking of the earth, the inscriptions in the rocks glowed with such fire that they finally gained the attention of the party, a warning observed too late. The sight sent fear down even Torsten's spine. With the memory of the Adalia fresh in their minds, another otherworldly assault was too much for even the stoutest heart among them to bear. Some prayed, some cursed, and some abandoned all hope of survival, but---riveted to the spot where they stood---it never occurred to any of them to flee.
A short distance ahead of them, Torsten saw the danger at the same instant. He dove from the precarious, unstable hill of rock on which his men stood to the safety of a small ledge in the cliff wall. He tried to spur his associates to action: "Get back! Get out of there!"
The roar of the quake and the noise of falling rock overpowered his cry. In their panic, they wouldn't have had the presence of mind to obey even if they had heard. From his perch, Torsten saw clearly what happened next. Just for the space of two heartbeats, the ground became as quicksand and Torsten's men sank into it, ankle-deep. This predicament barely gained their attention before quicksand hardened like iron and held them fast. No struggling loosened the earth's grip on their legs. They might have escaped had they a sword or axe and the fortitude to cut off their own feet…and had they done so quickly, for the earth was not finished with them yet.
The ground bubbled up around each man who had crossed into Desdemond's territory and cocooned them in dirt starting at their feet and working upwards until their cries were muffled as their faces were covered. Only Torsten, sheltered on the basalt ledge well above the ground, escaped as his men were shrouded in these vertical graves right before his eyes. Torsten uttered not a sound, not even a whimper of horror, during this for fear the evil at work would take notice of him next. He looked on, powerless to intervene, as the earthen lumps that had once been a small army began to melt back into the ground, like snowmen melting in the first warmth of spring, until nothing remained of them---not even their footprints.
The land fell still and quiet again. There wasn't so much as the twitter of a bird to break the stillness, there was only the ragged, shocked breathing of the sole survivor. After a great while, Torsten collected his wits. Grief or regrets would have to wait for another day. He had a task to complete---had to find young Grimm before Jacob or Desdemond's curses unleashed something worse.
The footprints he'd been following had quite suddenly vanished. Will stopped to catch his breath. The trail had grown steeper as it wound its way from the grassy hillside up into the mountain's lifeless, rocky terrain…terrain that grew more and more desolate as the trail ascended towards the 'sleeping man' summit. The path began to wind around the side of the mountain, with cliffs jutting upwards in peculiar columns of stone on one side of the trail and a drop-off to the ocean on the other. Cracks in the ground emitted steam that stank of sulfur, so powerful he almost gagged on the stench. For a few seconds, on his way up the mountain, Will even thought that the wind had sounded distinctly like screams, but dismissed that as (he hoped) his imagination playing tricks on him.
There was only one sign of life in the wretched landscape, and it was as out-of-place on this island as he felt: Jutting from the side of the side of the cliff, growing seemingly out of the rocks themselves in defiance of the fact that it should not survive there and knew it might fall into the sea at any moment, was a lush willow tree. Its branches were vibrant green against the stark, black basalt cliff and they floated in the breeze in a manner that reminded Will of….
…hair. As he stared, the vision of the longhaired woman atop the cliff from Sister's vision superimposed itself over the out-of-place willow, and the branches fluttering in the wind appeared as long strands of her hair. He could nearly discern the woman's features in the bark of the tree.
It did not belong; it should not be. Yet, there it was. Will's life had become such an endless parade of oddities and impossibilities that the presence of the willow tree didn't cause so much as a quirk of his eyebrow.
If that altar truly lay along this path, then its resting place had been selected to very pointedly warn trespassers: Stay away! Under any other circumstances, Will would have happily obliged. Between the odor and the ominous rock formations and the uneasiness that was growing stronger in his heart, Will was loathe to go one step farther. But, turning back would mean death for his brother one way or the other, and therefore he was prepared to press onward.
If he only knew which way Jacob and his pursuers had gone! With the sudden disappearance of the tracks, there was no way to be certain. Jacob might have continued into the mountain pass or he might have veered from this trail entirely and climbed the pile of broken basalt columns and boulders and shimmied right up the cliff. The walls of the cliff seemed a difficult climb and there was no sound reason to think that his brother had scurried up the cliff or that the altar lay in that direction.
No sound reason at all.
Which meant it would be a perfectly rational course of action in Jake's mind. Besides, if Jacob hadn't climbed up the cliff, then why did his trail end on this exact spot? "That's definitely the right way," Will mumbled to himself.
"How helpful that is to hear, Mr. Grimm."
The voice had come from the trail behind Will. He didn't need to glance over his shoulder to know who had crept up behind him. He only wondered if Mr. Jorn was alone.
Turning---ever so slowly---to face the larger man, Will hid a smile of satisfaction when Torsten's lackey recoiled at the sight of the talisman that still hung around Grimm's neck. Wondering how we retrieved it, no doubt. Jorn had no weapons, which meant if he wanted to make a prisoner of Will again, he'd have to risk touching the smaller man. Those angry welts on Jorn's hands from the last time he'd come in contact with Will's pendant would undoubtedly make Jorn reluctant to do so. The big man also looked suitably spooked by their surroundings. Perhaps he was more open to reason than he had been on the ship.
"I've only come to retrieve my brother, Mr. Jorn. I'm sorry about the whole 'ship coming to life and attacking everyone' incident. Sometimes Jake's plans even surprise me," Will gestured to his own bruised neck to underscore that point.
Jorn's face was a stone mask. "Are you now? Maybe we won't string you up by the neck and dunk you into the drink then…maybe we'll just kill you quick." He took a few steps closer and Will tensed for an impossible fight.
Jorn had taken only two steps when brilliant light, like fire, suddenly poured from the sides of the columnar cliff and the ground beneath their feet began to shake.