Sins 03 - Sins of Treachery

crevasse was edged with stones the colour of iron encrusted with mold, and steam poured from the hole. A hot stench, like decaying flesh, filled the air, yet still Simon felt a dark pull to the murky depths below as he gazed into the tumbling waters.
    Gest arrived on his skis, panting a little with the exertion of catching his brother, his face clouded with annoyance at being left behind.
    “The map says that the caves are accessible from the abyss,” Gest said, as if he had found the location. “So we’re going down there. We’re close, I can feel it.”
    Signaling back to the team, he directed them to set up the abseiling gear and soon the crew were busy hammering in equipment. Gest was impatient and, as soon as he could, descended first with his head-torch on, ignoring the team leader’s request for initial safety checks. As he disappeared beneath the lip of the waterfall, Simon hurried his own preparation, soon following Gest over the edge. He glanced down, watching as his brother ducked into a cavern under an overhang, unhooking his ropes in order to move more freely. Simon felt a pulse of excitement at finding the cave, a throbbing that seemed to vibrate through the rucksack from the book. Could this really be the place?
    As he reached the entrance he heard a low moan from within, a deep sound of horror that was scarcely human. He heard his brother retching and coughing, the sound echoing from the rough-hewn entrance. Simon unhooked his harness and hurried down the rocky corridor to the cave within, blue light filtering down as the walls turned to ice again away from the heat of the waterfall. As his head-lamp flickered and reflected off the surface, Simon caught a glimpse of his own face as if in a mirror, startling him with the resemblance to his twin. He stepped onward to find Gest bent double as he threw up the remains of his meager breakfast, the smell of vomit permeating the chill of the cave. Gest pointed wordlessly and Simon turned, his head torch illuminating what his brother had seen.
    A cylindrical block of ice bisected the cavern and as Simon looked closer, he realized there were bodies inside, parts of their frozen limbs protruding in bulges. But this was no peaceful grave, for their mouths were open in horror and their bodies had been split open, hacked apart and murderously slaughtered. Simon walked around the block, breathing deeply, swallowing down the bile that filled his own throat. On the far side, one man was split from chin to groin, his frozen entrails dragged from his body, his heart flopped from his chest, with mutilated intestines and bowels frozen into a tableau of agony. Another figure was face down in the ice, his head crushed as if chewed by the maw of a hell fiend, his back torn open by claws that rent his spine, exposing the bones through ragged flesh flayed from his body. Who or what had done this? Simon stared in horror, but part of him felt the echoes of violence as an edge of arousal.
    “What do you think happened to them?” Gest asked, finally standing straight. He took a swig of water to rinse his mouth and then spat it out onto the floor of the cave, where it swiftly froze.
    Simon examined another of the figures, his head cruelly twisted around to face the back of his body, his eyes frozen open and his mouth contorted. The dead man’s clothes could be seen more clearly, the style and fabric from an earlier generation.
    “Whatever it was,” Simon replied, “it happened a long time ago.”
    “Do you think Grandfather knew about this?” Gest asked.
    Simon heard a tinge of judgment, a hint of blame in his brother’s horrified voice, but he only felt a growing kinship with his grandfather’s quest and a rising discernment of what must come. He swung off his pack, removing the book of multi-hued leather. It seemed to pulse in his hands as he flicked through the pages for the handwritten notes he had once glimpsed and now perhaps began to understand.
    On one page was a rough map of the north, with the label Hyperborea written in blood and twin lightning bolts scrawled at the bottom. In the middle of the landmass was a demon, a creature of primal myth, with six wings beating against the cold north wind. His grandfather had never been able to explain what it meant but now Simon felt a heat resonate from the book, a throb of rising power. Light seemed to emanate from it and Simon’s vision flashed. Suddenly he saw the cave floor awash with blood and hacked bodies as