As the angels streaked to the surface of the planet like flaming birds shot from the sky, Kali—Blackest Aspect of the Mother Goddess, Destroyer of Universes, Fiercest of Hunters—sat with crossed ankles in a dimly lit casino, clad in glittering tight fabric the color of blood, her curls held back by a delicate clip carved from the fang of a god. A bracelet of tiny black skulls clinked on her wrist, and its match adorned her throat.
In her hand, she held a vial. A long-forgotten vessel of clear glass, the deep crimson blood of an angel held within. She tapped one long nail against the stopper. Made to pull it out but changed her mind at the last moment, then folded space around her so she stood on a moonlit beach.
When she walked, it was as if she walked on an invisible pathway just above the sand. Her heels made no sound. She stopped at the edge of the waves. She observed the saline birthplace of many a god and goddess.
Kali raised her arm and let the vial of the Archangel Gabriel's blood roll from her palm into the sea.
"Consider my debt repaid."
It bobbed away in the darkness.
As it floated across the oceans—through ferocious storms and strangely still water alike, kept afloat by the tiny bubble of air just under the stopper—not a single creature dared approach it. Curious dolphins merely eyed it from a distance. Sirens heard the way its glass sang against the waves and dove deep down to watch it from below as it refracted sunlight into wine-colored beams. Sea otters, always eager for trinkets to play with, kept away.
Until eventually it rolled up onto a gravelly shore.
An old man, wearing torn jeans and a white beard that he kept short with a pair of metal scissors, reached down his wizened hand and scooped up the little glass container. He held it up to the hard, white light reflecting off the clouds.
He smiled at the vessel in his hands.
He threw the glass of it up into the roiling sky as icy rain, and tossed the blood down as rusty sand around his bare feet, coating the landscape for miles. He formed the resulting mud into the shape of a cocoon and filled it full of wild honey and snake venom and pebbles and the roots of nightshade and the seeds of apples and the blood of a fawn that had been run down by a logging truck. He drew red lines of black cherry juice and deer blood across the chrysalis of mud in patterns of trees and sigils and whorls.
He reached up and dragged hot white lightning from the heavens and threw it into his creation.
The entire thing contracted and vibrated and shook, and collapsed into the form of a man, tattooed and naked.
Gabriel's eyes flew open, sparking gold and electric as he gasped and arched his back, and Coyote smiled down on him.
...
"Dean, check this out." Sam waved his brother over. As Dean leaned down, one hand on his shoulder, to look at the computer screen, Sam continued. "This name look familiar to you?"
Dean frowned. "C.S. Lewis? Isn't that the dude who wrote those Narnia books?" His fingers tightened on Sam's shoulder.
"Yeah." Sam pulled his blanket close about himself, and pointed to a line. "But get this, Dean." He briefly met his older brother's eyes, clearing his throat. "This so-called 'C.S. Lewis' is a fanfiction author, presumably using their favorite author's name as a handle on the internet." He coughed, lightly.
Dean nodded. "Yeah, well, I guess it's not like anyone would mistake them for the real thing since... Well, the real thing is dead." Then he narrowed his eyes, skimming the top of the story. "Wait—Sammy, is this for those goddamn Supernatural books? Why the hell are you looking at this shit?"
Sam rolled his eyes. He leaned back in his chair, shrugging Dean's hand off of him. "Because, Dean." He rubbed his eyes. "Garth pointed me to it and—Well, it talks about the angels Falling. Including what exactly led up to it. And more."
"Wait," Dean crossed his arms. "It's accurate?"
Sam nodded. "Yeah. Like prophet accurate." He sighed. "And I double-checked it with the original Supernatural books, and... The writing style matches."
Dean stepped away, shoving his hands into his pocket, and sat on the edge of the table. "Well, maybe it's just a hardcore fan with uncanny knowledge of everything we do?"
"How likely is that, Dean?" Sam ran a hand back through his hair, with a soft breath. "Anyway, when I say 'the writing style matches,' I don't mean it's mostly similar. I mean that every mannerism—the use of punctuation, the range of vocabulary words, the sentence variation—it's all identical. Exactly the same technique."
Dean closed his eyes. "Jesus Christ." He rubbed his face, and fixed his eyes on Sam. "But Chuck is dead."
"Exactly!" Sam spread his arms out wide, baffled and tired. He pushed his laptop away. "Chuck Shurley has to be dead. Wait—" He frowned, eyebrows pulling together. "C.S. Lewis died. But this C.S. Lewis is still writing."
Dean burst out laughing. "Initials, Sammy. C.S. Chuck Shurley." He tapped a finger against his eyebrow.
"No! Is it really that simple?" Sam leaned forward until his forehead rested on the wooden tabletop, and folded his hands against the back of his neck. "God this is ridiculous. How is it even possible?"
Dean hummed quietly—a few strains of "Stairway to Heaven"—and frowned. "Maybe Chuck never died in the first place?"
"But what about Kevin? There can only be one prophet, right?"
Dean pulled a face. "Yeah but—Kevin can read Enochian, sure, but that's all. He doesn't get weird bursts of prophetic vision. Maybe different kinds of prophets can exist at the same time." He tapped his foot against the floor, staccato and loud.
"Maybe."
...
In his small house, Chuck Shurley buried his face in his hands with a groan. His computer screen glowed at him, with the words of the Winchesters' conversation blinking black and accusing from a word document. He laughed under his breath. "You were right the first time, Dean. I died." He leaned back in his chair and pushed his unruly hair back from his forehead. "But God forbid anyone ever stay dead! No, that's much too easy!" He kicked at a leg of his desk. Lurched forward, planting his elbows on his desk. Rubbed at one eye, exhausted, a bottle of Jack Daniels within his reach.
His bible—which he hadn't read since probably before the Winchesters were born—sat gathering dust on top of a bookshelf.
In the flickering shadows, he whispered, "I don't want to be the final Prophet."
...
Gabriel cleared his throat. "First off, why am I naked? Second: Tattoos?" He paused. "And most importantly, why am I alive?" Dusting himself off, he rolled to his feet and set his eyes on Coyote, dark and a little accusing and most definitely confused. He crossed his arms and the red lines covering them seemed to glisten as he moved. Maybe that was because of the rain streaming over his skin but somehow he doubted it.
"Well, I make life. Not clothing." Coyote stroked his scraggly beard. "Those tattoos exist because your Soul asked for them, and you are alive because I created you."
Gabriel frowned.
He kicked out his bare foot and sent a rotting apple rolling away from him. It sparked where his toes hit it, and reddened and firmed, but the long winding asphalt of the highway bruised it up again. Gabriel blinked down at his foot. He looked back up at Coyote, whose eyes were the color of the still-raging rainstorm.
"Why did you recreate me?"
Coyote smiled. He reached a wrinkled hand out and set it on Gabriel's face. It felt hot and dry. "Because many have faith in Gabriel and many have faith in Loki." He reached down to pluck a pebble from the dirt-turning-to-mud and as he lifted it to eyelevel it changed. It didn't morph. It didn't poof. It just was. A flattish, ovoid mask, with a cold laughing face and a rune on its forehead. He held it out to Gabriel. The inside was mirrored.
Gabriel took it in his hands. "What do I need a mask for?"
"To hide your face."
Gabriel scoffed and looked up from the mask. Coyote was gone. Or maybe he had just taken the shape of the wind. It was hard to tell, with old gods. Gabriel shook his head and held the mask to his face and it seemed to cling to his skin and meld to the shape of his nose and mouth and forehead. He felt at the front—it remained the same. Smooth stone. Stretched mouth. Narrowed eyes. Norse on its forehead.
Gabriel peered down at his arms and his torso and his knees. The burgundy lines adorning him seemed alive. Perhaps a trick of the light.
"I don't even have a soul."
He sighed.
"Or clothes."
Gabriel snapped his fingers. Nothing happened. He frowned.
Above him, the clouds twisted violet and black and silver. He squinted at the sky. Raised his hands, and snapped his fingers again.
An electric shock rattled through his veins and the clouds disappeared as his knees hit the road. He pulled in a rushing breath, staring down at the golden lightning arcing back and forth between his splayed fingertips. It flickered out but left his teeth on edge and the hairs on his arms standing up. Gabriel ground his palm down against the gravel. It hurt, and he hissed a curse between his teeth. There was a shard of glass with the crumbling asphalt.
He turned his hand over to see little beads of blood standing against the skin, interspersed with bits of dirt and tiny shards of rock. He brushed his palm off with his other hand. He pushed his mask back so he could tongue the blood from his hand. It tasted sharp and far too metallic and a little sweet. Like honey and pebbles and arsenic. Not natural.
Gabriel shoved his mask back down and turned his face to the now-blue sky. It seemed over-saturated—too brightly colored and strangely watery.
The sun hurt his eyes. That was new. He laughed low and hoarse and dark like the distant thunder.
"I forgot what it was like to be a god."
His eyes sparked with lightning and he stood, to walk down the highway until he found... something.
The taste of his own blood lingered behind his teeth.
He grinned beneath his mask.
...
This may be confusing but uh...
All will be explained.
Eventually.
Oh God what have I started.