Up the Mount of Purgatory

And into the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta

*AUTHOR'S NOTE: More and more research is required for every chapter! For any information on the Kogi Tribe that isn't terribly misconstrued, look up Alan Ereira's accounts in the television documentary The Heart of the World, information on Purgatory in Dante's Purgatorio, and any and all information regarding Sam and Dean Winchester and Castiel in Kripke's television series Supernatural. *

A lingering sense of danger accompanied Cato's departure. Anxiously Dean scanned the cliff face before them, which darkened from a yellowy hue to an orangeish-red as the sun lowered in the sky. It rose sheer, with not so much as a pebble jutting outwards for a foothold. Sir Edmund Hillary wouldn't have attempted it; he would have blanched and said no can do, before hurrying away. Dean allowed his eyes to flick to Castiel's.

Can you fly_

No_

And then they heard it. A menacing howl sounded from the forest behind them, undoubtedly aimed in their direction. (1) Words were tumbling out of Castiel's mouth, one right over the other, something about an extinct species… precursor to gray wolf… one of the first Cynodictis… but the one word Dean really latched onto was deadly, and it was that word which made him grab Castiel by the sleeve and start running, flying along the side of the cliff, because if there was any way they were getting out, it would have to be upwards.

They kept running for some time, both men wrestling hysteria, each certain jaws were snapping right at their ankles. In the panic that had seized him, Castiel almost missed it: a wound in the cliff wall only just wide enough to fit a man, but deep and dark and climbable. He stopped dead in his tracks, tripping Dean up, and used the momentum to spin the man around by the shoulders and shove him into the crevice. He was pretty sure Dean's right arm was bruised on one of the jutting rocks, but he had no time to acknowledge the injury.

"Climb," he said shortly, coming in after.

It took everything within Dean not to swear.

OO

Sam, however, did swear. It was uncharacteristic of him, to so vehemently shout profanity to no one in particular, but at that moment Sam wasn't quite himself. In fact, if God-Kevin were around right at that moment, Sam would have shot him in the face.

Turned out God was right after all.

The world was fading. Sam had looked it up, and found the signs, cropping up all over the place. Why couldn't he see it before? The laws of causality weren't operating normally, they were malfunctioning just the same way they'd been during the Apocalypse, but when the Apocalypse ended, they didn't stop, but Sam had never checked on them again, because he's just assumed they had stopped.

Never make assumptions, John Winchester had once said, way back on Sam's first hunt. And Sam had done just that.

He was furious with himself, but he channeled that fury. He may not have been Ash, and he certainly lacked a good deal of Bobby's common sense, but he could build a program to track the hot spots, the places where the Word was most likely to be hidden. With supplementary research, he narrowed it down to ten areas. He just wished he had a second opinion, another person to check his theories with. As it was, he had no one to rely on, save a deity watching over him. It wasn't a comfort to him in the least.

But twenty-five be damned. Sam immediately made arrangements to visit Colombia. He had a mountain to climb.

OO

Dean didn't know how long they'd been climbing. He only knew that his bones ached, his hands were bleeding, and his sneakers were torn, now tattered strips of leather hardly recognizable as footwear. For some odd reason, the sun had yet to sink below the horizon, remaining to cast a dim light on the decaying and crumbling ledges they had passed so far. The only reason Dean didn't just let go of the rock and allow himself to drop was the knowledge of the fact that Castiel was climbing directly below him, and that if he dropped, he'd kill the angel, too.

Even so, he considered it. The pain was unbearable, excruciating. His body was screaming at him, to juststopitstopthehurting, when he glimpsed a ledge, a solid ledge, running along the side of the mountain just a little ways above him. Hope surged within him, dulling the agony, and he excitedly looked downwards to relay the good news to Castiel.

Castiel had stopped climbing. He was a good deal farther down than Dean expected him to be, and his limbs were trembling violently with the effort of clinging to the rock face. An unnatural pallor seemed to bleach his skin; a sheen of sweat covered it.

The words died in Dean's throat. He could scarcely remember what he had been going to say. But then Castiel's eyes were pulled upwards, as if my some invisible force how does that always happen? and Dean could see in them…Castiel was considering exactly the same thing he had been; of just letting go and allowing himself to be beaten by the surrounding rocks until he reached the bottom.

And it all came flooding back.

"There's a ledge just a little ways ahead, just a very little ways ahead," he begged. He wanted to bully Castiel into climbing again, but he couldn't. "We can rest there."

The anguish in Castiel's expression didn't lessen. His lips did part though, and he uttered some sort of strangled syllable Dean could only presume was a word. It still looked like he was going to drop.

Pleasepleaseplease, pleasepleasepleaseplease...

But then, with what looked like tremendous effort, Castiel's bloodied, trembling arm rose. He clenched at the next outcropping of rock, seeming to slip for a moment…

PLEASE, pleasepleasePLEASE...

… Before holding firm. Within a few minutes, he was directly below Dean again. Dean had kept up his wordless plea the entire time, white-faced with terror, and was only jerked back to awareness by Castiel's gasping voice.

"Ledge," the angel said urgently. And they continued to climb.

OO

The lore on the Kogi was hard to come by. They were a secretive and suspicious tribe, and so there were a limited number of sources Sam could consult for information.

Well, only one source, really. But it was enough to convince Sam that the Word of God was in the mountain. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. The geological evidence alone was staggering, for how else could every type of ecosystem in the world be contained in a single four-mile-high mountain?

Although they had closed the bridge providing access to their civilization following the end of Ereira's filming, Sam had found it easy enough to bypass the natural and more artificial barriers to the Pre-Columbian polity. He had God on his side, after all.

"I bestow upon you the gift of tongues, prophecy, revelation, visions, healings, interpretation of tongues, and so forth," the Holy Being had said, before dumping Sam rather unceremoniously into the thick of the forest in the Sierra. He hoped the blessings he was given covered immunizations. As it was, the ear-splitting sound of a trump seemed to accompany his arrival, a sound which more than his presence seemed to alarm the white-clad native before him. Her eyes widened into round white orbs, and a small shriek escaped her lips. She dropped the stick she was holding, along with the bean seeds in her other hand.

"Are you a… vassal?" Sam asked hesitantly. Somehow he felt it would be wrong to say take me to your leader.

She garbled something which sounded vaguely Chibchan, but gradually the meaning of her words flowed to Sam, like clear water flowing through a crystal funnel. "…Last Trump… Younger Brother reoccupy… oh dear…. The Mamas… chaos…"

And she fainted. Sam barely caught her before she hit the ground.

OO

It seemed the Sun finally found something better to do once Dean and Castiel collapsed on the edge of the grassy ledge. It abruptly ducked its head below the horizon, leaving them in utter darkness, uncomfortably reminiscent of the darkness of the crevice they'd been previously navigating.

Castiel had no words of gratitude for Dean, for what he did before. Castiel had no words at all. His voice seemed to have given out. Instead he allowed his head to loll to the side, so that he could look at the hunter, and give his thanks in full sincerity, silently.

Dean didn't know it, but the climb hadn't just been physically taxing for Castiel. The moment his hand touched rock, it felt as if some of his spiritual vitality was draining away, as well. As they ascended, Castiel felt more and more the effects of a cold and clammy weariness, an empty despair, which gripped him mercilessly, and refused to let go. He had almost lost the will to climb, like a lamp that had run out of oil. It was only when Dean had looked down that he could manage to remember why he hadn't let go fifty feet down.

In that all-consuming despair, though, Castiel found questions plaguing him, and even without climbing, those questions persisted. I don't know what is right, he thought. I hardly know why I do anything, and I don't know if any of it right. If it isn't, then what am I? Just another monster…?

He contemplated asking Dean about it in the morning, for the hunter was already passed out from exhaustion, but eventually resolved to keep the matter to himself. Dean didn't need to think about his problems, and if he could learn to prioritize, he didn't need to think about them either. Escape, surely, was a greater concern…

(1)The howling was aimed in their direction, but Castiel and Dean weren't actually in any danger of being pursued by the creatures. Cato had unwittingly stumbled upon a pack of them a little ways back, and very dutifully led them the other way. However, Dean's reaction was perfectly normal and healthy for any resident of Purgatory… it's not usually a good idea to wait and see if they're really coming for you before you start running. It's as the age old saying goes: Run first, ask questions later.