A/N: This story started with the tiniest of plot bunnies: a connection between the Men of Letters bunker and the ancient materials at the Druids' Keep, which had the delightful effect of making Sam and Dean sort of proto-Druids...killing monsters, saving people. But it took Supernatural episode 11.14, "The Vessel," to spark an idea for the mechanism of pulling Sam and Dean 3,000+ years into the future. It can be assumed that this story takes place after that episode, at some logical point of one's choosing.

The Shannara Chronicles played pretty fast and loose with Shannara universe lore in retelling the events of The Elfstones of Shannara (book 2 of the Shannara series). Consequently I've taken the same approach to this story, which relates to the events of The Sword of Shannara (book 1 of the Shannara series). The Shannara Chronicles left a breadcrumb trail of clues about what took place 30 years before, and I tried to follow it, embellishing with Shannara universe lore just as fast-and-loosely as possible.

I hope you enjoy.

Chapter 1: Men on Quests

"I think I may be onto something," Sam said. He dropped a thick file on the table next to Dean's plate. "It occurred to me that maybe we do already have something right here in the bunker that we could use against Amara."

"Didn't they spell 'fairy' wrong?" Dean pointed at the label on the Men of Letters file folder, which read 'Faerie Artifacts.' He swallowed his mouthful of blackberry pie.

"It's an alternative spelling." Sam picked up the file impatiently and opened it. "It seems to be used particularly when referring to the way the fairy dimension intersects with ours. The point is that the Men of Letters have been collecting bits and pieces of Faerie stuff for centuries."

"And you think something like that can handle the sister of God?"

"You know how powerful the fairies we've run into have been," Sam said. "And we're talking about an alternate dimension here. It's possible that Amara wouldn't be able to defend against a power source from another dimension."

Dean's skeptical expression shifted into a thoughtful one. "So you're saying if we can't break down a wall, we dig under it?"

"Exactly." Sam had been leafing through the file, but now he stopped. "This, for instance. Most of these things seem kind of low-level, but this one..."

Dean looked at the page his brother was pointing to. "What the hell is an Elfstone?"

_._._

There had to be a solution, but Allanon was no longer sure he could find it here, in the ruins of the Druids' Keep. Still, he kept searching, uncertain what else to try.

He had woken from the Druid Sleep with the screams of the first victim ringing in his mind, knowing that the Warlock Lord had returned, just as his mentor, Bremen, had warned him would occur. What he had not anticipated was that the Warlock Lord would move so very quickly to neutralize the only threat to his existence: an heir of Jerle Shannara. Without a Shannara heir to unlock its magic, the weapon that Bremen had created to defeat the Warlock Lord was useless; the sword might as well remain locked in its vault in Arborlon for the rest of eternity. And already, all the known heirs were dead.

Allanon had not given up entirely on that means of defeating the Warlock Lord. The heirs of Shannara no longer sat on the Elven throne; had not done so in over 200 years. There would be unregarded younger sons and daughters in that line whose royal lineage had been forgotten. But finding them was a task that could take months, if not years, and the Druid had weeks at best before the Warlock Lord's new army would descend to enslave the people of the Four Lands. So he had left that task in the hands of royal archivist and set out to find some alternative means of destroying the Warlock Lord.

As he sifted through piles of debris, his thoughts, usually sternly disciplined, drifted to the archivist...her head bent over her work, her eyes flashing at some sudden insight, her lithe limbs propelling her up ladders or between racks of scrolls to find the document she was seeking. Eventine Ellesedil, current king of the Elven people, had hinted that his sister had retreated into the archives as a shelter from some heartbreak in her youth. But Pyria had given no impression of being a reclusive hermit; instead, she seemed to be in her element.

And her breath had caught in her throat when he had come into the room.

Not that it should have made any difference. She was hardly the first woman whose thoughts had taken an uncomfortable turn in his presence. He had learned simply to block them out as a matter of course, relying on the discipline Bremen had instilled, remembering sternly that a Druid's life did not allow for the complications of a relationship that lasted longer than a single night.

But Pyria had silenced her own thoughts. That should not have mattered either. She was no conventional beauty, with that sarcastic quirk at the corner of her mouth, and her dark hair pulled back for practicality, exuding competence instead of the more typical female desire to attract the eye. It was troubling beyond measure that he had been attracted. And that he had found it difficult to pretend otherwise each time he had gone to consult with her. Or to pretend that she was altogether successful at hiding her feelings when she was not.

I have no time for this. Allanon wrenched his thoughts back forcibly to the task at hand. Hidden throughout the Druids' Keep were artifacts of magic, many of them from before the Great Wars. Even Bremen had not been certain what all of them were, or where the remaining Druids at the time of the Keep's fall had concealed them. But if there remained any chance of fighting the Warlock Lord without an heir of Shannara, it was here.

Here. The faintest draft of magic whispered through a hairline crack between two flagstones. The bones of some former Druid were spilled across the stone that hid something he had probably died to protect. Allanon murmured a chant of respect as he gently swept the bones aside. Then he summoned magic to raise the stone, bracing himself against the burn it always produced. The palm along the base of three fingers on his left hand this time. It would heal, as always, but in the meantime it stung like fire.

The recess in the floor was filled with sacking material. Allanon lifted it out gingerly, cautious of disturbing something dangerous in its folds, but nothing more hazardous than dust came out with it. Underneath, at the bottom of the recess, was a metal box, wider than it was tall. Allanon held the torch closer to examine the lid, still wary of protections that might have been placed to protect whatever it contained. And there was, indeed, a sigil on the lid. But not of the kind that would release a warding spell.

He scarcely dared to believe it.

It was a star with six points, designed, like most star sigils, to be drawn in a single stroke. But this was a mark he had seen only a few times. Bremen had told him that it identified items from an ancient treasure trove: a collection of knowledge and artifacts that had survived the Great Wars, which the first Druids had hoped would contain the scientific knowledge necessary to rebuild everything that was lost in that cataclysm. It had failed them in that regard, sending them deeper into the study of magic instead. But the artifacts...

Some of them were deadly, particularly without the information that identified and catalogued them. Allanon looked around him in despair, realizing how unlikely it was that he could find any of that information in the rubble. But he had no choice but to investigate what the box contained. He had come here knowing the risks of meddling in lost secrets.

He lifted the box out carefully, noting its weight and the slight shifting inside of whatever it contained. Something loose—no, several smaller items, but padded enough not to move far. Looking around again, he made a decision. Daylight could either activate or diminish some types of magic, and he wanted closer access to it than he had here.

He made his way toward the entrance, stopping just short of the stronger light spreading from the arch, where a fallen stone block provided a rough working surface on which to place the ancient box. Fortunately the clasp required no key, although two small loops suggested that at one time it might have been protected by a small padlock.

Hardly the protections one would place on a truly dangerous artifact. But that meant that whatever was inside might be worthless to him. Struggling against a surge of impatience, he undid the clasp and slowly opened the lid.

The padding material was silk, in a dazzling variety of colors. Upon closer inspection, it appeared that each wad of silk was wrapped around an object...or objects. Allanon painstakingly tugged at the folds of the wad of yellow silk, attempting to reveal what it held without spilling or touching the contents. His efforts were rewarded when small, smooth stones, seemingly made of glass, came into view. Just three stones in the hollow of the cloth.

Impossible.

Bremen had spoken of Elfstones once, describing how their magic drew upon the heart, the body, and the soul of the wielder—one aspect for each stone—as an example of the many means by which magical power could be channeled. But because only an Elf could use them, and because they were not catalogued anywhere in the royal collections in Arborlon, even Bremen had believed them to be lost.

They had been here all along. And not merely one set, to judge by the number of colors shimmering in the box. If Elves could be found who were capable of wielding each set, the combined power might be enough to give the Four Lands a chance against the Warlock Lord, heir or no heir.

For the first time in weeks, Allanon felt a surge of hope.

Of course, it might not be that simple, he warned himself. Logic suggested that each set might have unique properties of its own, and those properties might affect whether any given set could be used for the kind of combat they were facing. It was also possible that each set might be attuned only to a certain combination of characteristics of heart, mind, and spirit. The notion of lining up dozens, even hundreds, of Elven volunteers who were willing to risk the effects of magic was a daunting prospect.

But they were Elfstones. Which meant that somewhere, buried in the royal archives in Arborlon, there might be more information about them than he had any chance of finding here. More time to spend with Pyria, whispered that persistent urge. An urge that was increasingly involving his body as much as his mind.

And his heart? the urge whispered.

Crossly, he began sorting through the colored bundles, trying to determine if all the sets were complete. He was no longer afraid of touching the stones—they could have no possible effect on a Human, even one who commanded Druid magic. Holding each one up to the light, he noted the translucent stones were colored, matched to the silk to that contained them.

He realized that the black bundle was different the moment he hefted it. There was no quiet clicking of stone against stone, and there was only one shape inside the cloth. He untangled the wrapping anxiously, wondering if this was an incomplete set, or perhaps some other artifact altogether.

No, it was a glass stone like the others, except larger. And much, much darker, in every sense. It tugged his hand to grasp it before he could resist, and then it tugged at his magic, as if it were trying to draw the power out of his body and into the stone.

Horrified—but I'm not an Elf—he wrenched the power back. It was a more difficult struggle than he expected. His magic was entangled in something inside the stone. Unable to afford to lose any part of it—not now—he jerked hard on the cord of his magic, feeling suddenly as if whatever might be on the other end were the oldest grandfather fish that had broken his line time and time again in the river of his childhood.

Not. This. Time.

Something broke loose, and then everything was rushing towards him, power and all. His last clear thought was that he was helpless against whatever he might have drawn through the stone. Then something softish but heavy fell on him, knocking out everything that remained of his breath, and darkness claimed him.

_._._

While Dean went through the cabinet looking for a match to the identification code, Sam spouted information from the file.

"Back in the Renaissance, the Men of Letters went on...well, a sort of quest to recover all the Elfstones, so they couldn't be used against humans. Some of them even went into the fairy dimension looking for the stones, and not all of them made it back."

"Why does that not surprise me?" Dean said. He pulled a large manila envelope, deformed with the thick, rectangular shape inside, from the back of the cabinet. "Here we go."

Upstairs on the main worktable, Dean slid a metal box, roughly the size and shape of cashbox, out of the envelope. It bore the Men of Letters symbol on the lid. He examined the small padlock on the clasp. "Key?"

Sam detached it from the prongs of the Elfstones document and handed it to his brother. Dean was about to fit it into the lock when he paused. "If these stones were meant to be used against humans, how does that help us?"

"I don't think they were, exactly," said Sam. "According to the lore the Men of Letters were going off of at the time, the different colors of stones had different properties, but all of them had a similar power," he located the passage with his finger, "'to destroy the wielder's enemies.' See, during that period, there were a lot of incursions from the fairy dimension, which is why there are all these references to fairies in the literature of the time, like Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. So the Men of Letters back then were trying to round up any and every kind of Faerie artifact that could be turned into a weapon."

Dean had proceeded to unlock the box, and now he lifted the lid. Inside was a rainbow of cloth bundles. "I assume the colors match the packaging? How do they work?"

"Well, supposedly they don't, not for us," Sam admitted. "Except that one." He pointed to the black bundle.

Dean turned a quizzical expression on his brother. "Wait, they don't work?"

"The lore says you have to be an Elf. And I mean specifically an Elf, not any other kind of fairy creature. But the Black Elfstone was different. It's supposed to absorb magical power, regardless of its source. I thought," Sam said, "that it might be able to absorb Amara's power."

"So we just have to get it near her?" Dean lifted the black bundle from the box and began unwrapping the shape inside. "Or does it actually have to come in contact with her?"

"No idea." Sam shrugged. "Nothing in the file, anyway."

"Great," said Dean, staring down at the glassy black stone cradled on the dark fabric in the palm of his hand. "Got any ideas for testing it?" Although he hadn't precisely intended to do so, he found himself reaching out a finger to caress the smooth, rounded surface. He recognized that he had made a mistake as his muscles turned into flimsy rubber bands, and he sagged against the table.

"Dean!" Sam grabbed his arm, but that only made what was happening worse. It was as if the stone was drawing something from Sammy through him.

"We don't have any magic!" Dean pointed out weakly, accusingly, but the stone wasn't listening, and now he couldn't let it go.

"I can't..." Sam gasped, his eyes clenched shut, his face taut with concentration. In all his struggles with the demon blood, he had never felt anything like this; when he had lost that power after the apocalypse was averted, it had simply faded. This felt as if the stone was drawing him in, in some way he was powerless to resist. Then the sensation began to change, turning instead into a whirlpool that was sucking him down, and he realized there was a consciousness on the other side of it. Once he might have been able to fight back, but the skills were disused. The magic was supposed to be gone!

Something snapped, and the brothers were falling...falling...falling.

The landing, when it came, hurt.

A/N: Authors live for comments. Just saying.