Part I:

The late afternoon sunlight fell through the stained glass windows with an incontestable sense of entitlement, taking on the color afforded by the glass as if shrugging on a warm coat proffered by a loyal family retainer. The reds and purples blossoming linearly across the space of the room due to the rays' arrogant and thoughtless fulfillment of nature's laws alighted finally, and with a sense of gentle purpose, on a young man's bald head.

The curvature of his skull was lit up roseate, the bright lightening of a reflection flashing as he leaned back in his seat, the color falling instead upon his features, into the crevices of a frown. He glared down at the information before him, willing it to change, or at least conform to some strain of reality and logic he could recognize.

Alexander Luthor had become accustomed, over the past year and a half, to the strange things that occurred in the small Kansas town he had come to call his home. That he still attempted to call his home. There were, without a doubt, freaks and miracles galore to be found in Smallville, but the strangeness here presented to him, in the form of several emergency reports from outlying holdings of his company, was, for all intents and purposes, unprecedented.

Alexander, or as he had always been known both to himself and to others as an abbreviation of himself, Lex, mouthed the words of the report, as if that would somehow draw the sense from them: "a herd of cows all subject to sudden-onset albinism?" The livestock was otherwise untouched and unharmed, and Lex had already dispatched a team of experts to discover the meaning behind this incident, whatever it might be - paint or paranormal. Within the same square mile, a field had been waylaid to by a swarm of locusts. A single field, after the devastation of which the locusts had promptly disappeared. Nearby, a rain of fish (specifically an even mix of rainbow and steelhead trout) had badly damaged a young crop of grain sorghum.

In the purposefully haunting voices of the Excelsior Academy's Boys' Choir, Lex's classical education prodded at him, a timeless Handel melody and adolescent Hallelujahs unearthing memories in the same way canons unearthed the cold bodies of runaway boys from the bottom of a deep river. The bloated and macabrely beautiful corpse of one night arose - only several weeks after Julian's death - one night which Lex had spent hidden in the school's chapel, turning to the one place from which he had never thought to seek comfort: the Holy Father, eternally and blasphemously falling short of the father who still walked earthbound.

Lex huddled in a second-row pew, the seemingly mile-high figure of the Lamb hung above him, wooden and gilded face contorted in sorrow and pain in the stained light of the moon, tumbling unapologetically through the glass. The man who, Lex had always felt, embodied nothing more and nothing less than the Son - betrayed, abandoned, and, most of all, forsaken by His Father.

During the long vigil of that night, Lex had found solace in the Book of Revelation, allowing his imagination to wander far from his current miseries to a world of many-eyed, many-winged beasts and terrifying horsemen, not so very different from the fantastic stories found between the colorful pages of Warrior Angel, his chosen fantasy world.

Tendrils of memory snaked across Lex Luthor's mind, glinting before his eyes briefly like dust particles caught in the inevitability of light filtered through colors created by human craft. Signs of darkness soon to come, of a fiery setting followed by a long silence, a crescendo and a flash which preceded an eternal stillness.

Lex, so rarely Alexander, leaned back further in his chair, the red light spilling into his lap and onto a hand which reached out to slam shut the dark casket of his laptop, carrying with it only the slightest tremor of fear.

These were not signs.

These were Seals.

Part II:

Dean Winchester stared down at the radio deck, his features twisted into a look of indignant horror as the sounds of an intoxicated string-instrument, over which a male vocalist warbled earnestly, filled the hallowed space of his Impala. "Is that Billy Ray Cyrus? Where the hell are we?"

Sam gave a sleepy grunt and sat up, working the stiffness out of his shoulders and tucking rampant hair behind his ears. "I'd say Hell, but I don't recall there being this much corn…"

Dean put a stop to the warbling with one angry and disappointed turn of the knob, then squinted out at the sunny world ahead, the edges of his mouth dipping down with what appeared to be a touch of disgust for the wide blue sky and tall stalks on either side of the dirt road they traveled down. "You getting Kostner vibes?"

"As in?"

"As in, any minute now I'm gonna splatter Babe Ruth across the windshield."

"Nah, I'm getting more Children of the Corn." Sam reached up to lower his sun-guard against the glare of the afternoon, wincing, his mouth echoing the bend of his brother's frown, but suffused with more pain than frustration and intent. Dean watched this grimace out of the corner of his eye, seeming to note its every stage and feature, and muttered, "You feeling okay?"

Sam glanced over at him, one eyebrow rising slightly and the edge of the grimace turning up into the broken border of a smile. "I could probably use some coffee."

Dean nodded bleakly, but the grim line of his lips attempted to return his brother's gesture and raised the corners of his mouth, belying the desperation and disapproval that crackled at the edges of his jaw and the creased corners of his eyes. "We'll stop somewhere in town," he muttered, and turned back to glare out at the road, "you know, if we ever find the town…!"

Part III:

The morning at the Talon had been surprisingly busy, and despite the fact that managers traditionally were not actually allowed breaks, Lana Lang took a moment to hide at a corner of the counter and breathe in a marginal fare of respite. The afternoon rush was dying down and there were still a few hours till the inevitable town-wide caffeine crash at five PM - restocking could wait a few precious and peaceful moments.

The little bell above the door rang, informing the world at large that yet more locals had come to patronize the Talon that day; but when Lana looked up to greet them with the last of her energy and good will - she realized very quickly that these were not locals.

Nothing local about them.

Well, that wasn't entirely true; there was something vaguely corn-fed and Kansasy about the two men who walked through the door. The taller one who followed behind, strings of dark hair hanging before a pale and pinched face, had a languidness to his movements that reminded Lana of Lex, or of the rare visitor the town had from Metropolis - this observation was compounded by the complexity of his coffee order.

The relatively smaller man - they were both well above six feet - blended better with the men of Smallville, his hair light and cropped short, his face handsomely creased and his shoulders heavy with either debt or long-borne anger. Their eyes met as he placed his order in a gruff voice and a flash of green forced Lana's gaze downwards, heat climbing up the sides of her neck. "I'll get that right to you, please have a seat."

In a similar and almost synchronized and bandy-legged gait, the two found their way over to a corner table, where the taller of the pair immediately produced a laptop, while the other gazed about him at the Talon's current clientele. Lana hurriedly turned her attention to the espresso machine, trying to ignore the tremors of premonition that made their way up her spine.