Cas gained altitude quickly, his wings beating the air in fast, powerful strokes. Soon they were high enough to get a clear view over the next mountain range. Beyond the jagged ridge of mountain-tops was a huge lake that seemed to fill the entire next valley. It seemed a little odd, actually, to see such a vast lake so high up in the mountains; but maybe it was normal for the Sun, for the gigantic solar flare sprang straight from the center of the lake. From this close, the base of the flare looked like a near-vertical pillar of glowing silver cloud.
For another half a minute Cas flew straight as an arrow toward that pillar of silver cloud. He seemed to be aiming high in order to clear the mountain range at a comfortable height. As he flew, a warbling sound reached their ears from quite far away, a sort of bugle that sounded almost like a distant trumpet. Cas flinched at the sound, and (to Dean's considerable alarm) Cas's wings snapped inward. Cas lost a few dozen yards of altitude all at once, in a sickening drop, before he flicked his wings open again a half-second later. Dean couldn't help giving a yelp, tightening his hold on Cas's feathers.
"Jeez! Was that on purpose?" Sam said. "Cas, what's wrong? Why'd you take us down?"
But for once Cas didn't look back at them, and didn't do one of his growly attempts at speech. He seemed to be focusing on something else. His big, dark head was tilting from side to side — first to the right, then the left, then the right again — and both ears were flicking back and forth.
He's looking for something, thought Dean. Had the trumpeting sound been some sort of warning from the little angels? Dean twisted around to glance behind, and beyond Sam's shoulder he caught a glimpse of Magog's silvery-gray shape in the distance. But only one fluttering dot was with Magog now, the red one, and even that dot was falling far behind Magog, apparently exhausted.
Where were Balthazar and Gabriel?
And where was Gog?
Cas gave an odd growl that almost sounded like eeeeeen — an attempt at "Dean," maybe? Dean looked forward to see that Cas now had his head turned a little sideways. He was looking at Dean with one big blue eye.
As soon as Cas caught Dean's eye, he raised both his forelegs in the air, slowly lifting both front feet till they were clearly in Dean's field of view.
"What are you..." Dean said, puzzled. "What do you mean?"
Cas made a deliberate grasping motion with both huge taloned paws. At the same time he ducked his head down unusually low. He peered at Dean again with one eye, head still held very low. The intensity in his expression seemed clear: He was trying to convey something. And Dean was pretty sure he knew what it was.
"Got it, Cas," Dean said, and he hollered over his shoulder, "Hold on and stay low, Sam! Really hold on. And get your head down!"
Cas nodded, adding an emphatic snort.
"Okay," Sam called back. Dean felt motion behind him as Sam adjusted his grip on the nearby feathers. "I'm trying. You're kinda in the way," Sam complained.
"Reach past me, then," suggested Dean. "I think we both gotta lie really low — I think Cas is gonna try something."
Cas had returned to tilting his head back and forth — perhaps scanning the clouds overhead. Sam got hold of one good fistful of feathers by Dean's side, and was still reaching around with his other hand, saying, "Okay, but—" when Cas banked wildly to the left, one wing flaring high and the other dropping so low it went completely out of sight. The world tilted crazily and they dropped fifty feet in half a second and shot sideways, just as Gog came roaring out of the cloud layer above them, barreling down at them like a freight train with his tremendous jaws wide open.
A huge blast of flame ripped through the air where Cas had just been.
Sam and Dean both yelled. But Cas had somehow managed to evade Gog's initial surprise attack. Cas was in near free-fall now, taking a steep, erratic zig-zag course downward, while Gog plunged after them, sending blast after blast of flame in their direction.
"Grab on to me!" Dean hollered to Sam. "Grab on, grab on!" Sam managed to get his free arm around Dean's waist and Dean yanked Sam's arm tighter till Sam was pressed right behind Dean, wrapped right onto Dean's back. Dean tightened his grip on his own feathers, wrapping some of the longer ones tight around his hands like a pair of reins, and then Dean bent down very low, practically lying down, while Sam flattened himself down on Dean's back.
Tree-tops rushed at them from below. But just as it seemed they were about to crash, Cas pulled out of his dive and simultaneously did another sharp turn, whipping to the right with both wings pumping hard. He began to climb, fast, toward a low pass in the mountain ridges just ahead. Gog didn't pancake into the trees this time, as he had during the previous chase a few hours ago (maybe he'd learned not to fall for that trick), but he had lost quite a bit of altitude. Gog tried to follow Cas back up, and soon Gog's enormous wings were beating the air with hurricane-force gusts, the huge trees below him actually bending with each great wingbeat. But apparently Cas was better at climbing, for the gap between Gog and Cas began to widen.
Gog let out an ear-splitting shriek and shot several more gusts of flame at them. The flames were alarmingly long, and a few of them got within a dozen yards of the tip of Cas's plumed tail. Dean felt Sam cringe against his back. The sensation was all too familiar: This was how Sam had nearly died, just a few short hours ago on the silver plains — when Sam had been lying across Dean, just as he was now, and taking the brunt of the flames.
Sam can't get burned again, Dean thought, closing his eyes. He can't. He can't. He can't go through that again. Please.
Cas gave a snort and somehow sped up a little bit more, wings beating even faster.
Only then did Dean realize he'd sent out a prayer to Cas without even intending to.
You can do this, Cas, Dean prayed then, pressing his face down into Cas's feathers. You can do this. You can do it.
Another snort; another spurt of acceleration.
Dean stole one more glance backwards — Gog was terrifyingly close now, looming behind Cas's plumed tail. The next roar of flame nearly got them but then Cas crested the pass.
There was a dizzying moment of weightlessness as Cas banked steeply downward down the other side. It seemed he thought his best chance was in skimming the tree-tops, not in a straight level flight, for he was headed right back down toward the treetops on the other side of the pass. It felt almost exactly like being in a roller-coaster heading down its first big fall.
"Oh my god," muttered Sam, pressed so flat against Dean now that he was almost talking into Dean's ear. Dean just hung on tight, heart in his mouth.
Down the slope Cas went, veering wildly through the tree-tops. Gog came barreling over the pass behind them with such momentum he couldn't follow their course at all; he shot straight ahead, but Cas had already dodged down and to the left. Gog gave a tremendous roar of rage and tried to wheel around after them, setting half the mountainside near him ablaze in his fury. But Cas had pulled ahead again and was picking up tremendous velocity, still pumping his wings even while headed down. Tall treetops were shooting past them with terrifying speed, Cas dodging each one at the last second, angling his wings so far that sometimes he went almost completely sideways. Behind them, Dean heard a series of crashing noises and more roars — Gog hitting those very same treetops, probably.
Then the treetops stopped, and they shot out over the glittering mountain lake. Ahead was the base of the solar flare, a wall of roaring cloud several miles across.
As they got closer it became apparent that the cloud-wall was rushing upward horrifyingly fast. Yet Cas charged right at it. He'd abandoned his zigzagging now and was charging at the flare head-on. Just when it seemed they were going to shoot straight into the cloud-wall and be torn to pieces by what looked like tornado-speed winds, Cas banked sharply upwards, so that he was flying straight up, the edge of the cloud-wall just a dozen yards away from his feet. Dean tightened his hold on his feather-reins, thinking he and Sam would surely have to hang on by their arms, but oddly there seemed to be a puff of air behind him that was almost pushing them up. They seemed to be in some kind of border zone of moving air that was rushing along right next to the flare, carrying them upwards. Cas had managed to make a tight enough turn to get them safely into this calmer vertical current of air, without yet plunging into the fastest part of it.
Dean could only gaze between Cas's ears to the rushing wall of cloud ahead. It was dizzying to see it from this angle, like being dangled above a wildly rushing river, or hanging upside-down in front of a tremendous waterfall. The cloud-wall seemed to be racing away at a blistering pace, shooting straight up into the sky. Dean stared up at it, totally disoriented for a moment.
It occurred to him, I should be scared.
It all should have been terrifying. Dean had always been scared of flying. Sam had always teased him about it. Everybody had teased him about it, actually. It was just a known fact: Dean Winchester was afraid of flying. So, as Dean watched the seething wall of cloud that was framed between Cas's black feathered ears, while he held Cas's long neck-plumes tight in his hands, he waited for the inevitable rush of fear to strike him. I should be afraid, he thought. I've always been afraid of flying. I should be afraid.
He waited for the fear.
But no fear came.
I'm not afraid, Dean slowly realized — with some disbelief. I'm flying straight up, straight UP, on a dragon, a hundred miles in the air — without a seatbelt! With a deranged psycho-dragon in hot pursuit! On the surface of the sun!
But I'm not afraid.
Maybe it was all too disorienting to take in? Maybe the scale of it all was just too vast. Maybe the threat of Gog's fire, just behind, was too much of an imminent threat for fear-of-flying to seem very important in comparison.
Or maybe he'd lost his fear of flying because...
I trust Cas, thought Dean.
He heard a faint hmm-mm sound. It almost seemed to be a vibration under his feet; almost a fragment of a purr.
"I trust you," muttered Dean aloud, this time making a deliberate effort to send it out as a prayer. "I trust you, Cas. I trust you. And I know you can do this. You can do this, Cas."
Dean kept muttering his prayer, and Cas doubled down on his efforts, again somehow summoning up another scrap of acceleration. He also began angling his vertical climb so that they edged closer and closer to the flare, the air around them flowing faster and faster as they did so. A wail from below caught Dean's ear and he looked down; Gog had veered away from the flare and was staring up at them from far below, unmistakable fury in his eyes. Gog couldn't seem to make a sharp enough turn to climb the flare, and seemed reluctant to charge right into the fastest part of it. He tried again, getting a running start this time (or rather, a flying start), but he hit the flare head-on; he was simply too big to make a smooth transition. His head and shoulders entered the flare while his long tail was still a good mile away, and in a split second he'd been flipped end over end and flung back through the air toward the mountains.
Gog tried again and again. But Cas was soaring ever higher now, and Dean watched as Gog, and the entire mountain-range around him, began to shrink in the distance, till Gog was nothing but a tiny distant speck.
Cas was very close to the main part of the flare now, the vast silvery wall of rushing cloud right next to his feet. Dean felt Cas's whole back shudder. All the feathers on Cas's back puffed up, sticking several feet up. Cas gave a weird groan, and somehow Dean knew what he meant: Get under my feathers.
"Get under the feathers, Sam!" Dean yelled. He wriggled farther down. Sam had still been hanging onto Dean's waist, but with a little rearranging they managed to get reorganized so that they were each lying down on one side of Cas's spine, Dean on the left and Sam on the right, burrowed far down into Cas's feathers now. Cas gave another shudder and the forest of back-feathers clamped right down over them, covering them up like a thick blanket. Cas angled his flight a little further. Dean felt a tremendous surge of acceleration grab them, so powerful it felt like they were on a rocket, but the feather-blanket held tight.
I'm on a rocket-powered dragon, taking off into space, thought Dean. But I'm not afraid.
There was an immense roar all around, and everything went shining white.