The wind howled past Dean's ears as Cas hurtled away from the wall of Darkness-smoke, the landscape shooting past in a blur beneath them. Cas seemed almost to flatten out as he picked up speed. He'd taken a laser-straight path aimed at the dead center of the wide circle of intact landscape that spread out ahead of them. This wasn't a zigzag chase, not like yesterday's' flight from Gog; this wasn't about agility at all, it seemed, but simply about sheer speed. Cas, and the three other angels flanking him, were just plain trying to outrace the Darkness.
Dean curled down as much as he could against the wind, adopting his "horse-jockey" position once more, with his nose almost down in Cas's feathers and a clump of feather-reins held tight in each hand. Sam shouted something from behind, but the wind was roaring so loudly past Dean's ears now that Dean could barely hear him.
"What?" called Dean, twisting around to look at him. But Sam was twisted around too, looking back, transfixed by something. Dean saw it too, and for one long moment he could only gape, staring back past Sam, and past Cas's long black tail, at the thing that was behind them now:
The end of the universe.
The Darkness.
It had already gotten closer, and it was huge. It must have been sweeping toward them with incredible speed, for it was barely a mile away now, a huge advancing wall of boiling black smoke that towered to the very skies. And it had grown, it seemed, somehow getting much, much taller. Even from a mile away it seemed to be reaching impossibly high, towering above them like some kind of unthinkably massive tsunami. Gabriel, who had taken a rear-guard position just a few wing-lengths behind Cas, seemed absolutely dwarfed in comparison. Gabriel really wasn't all that small at all (elephant-sized, Dean had to remind himself), but against that huge backdrop he looked tiny — a little feathered speck of green, against a gigantic roiling stormfront of black cloud that seemed to fill the whole world.
Dean craned his head back, peering up to the very top of that huge black wall. The flare they'd ridden yesterday was still just visible. Its base had been completely surrounded by Darkness-smoke now, but the arched silver top still stood proud, rearing up out of the sooty black smoke like a shining silver banner.
The arched silver top began to wobble.
It shuddered, thinned, and blew apart into a thousand drops of shining mist. They dissipated in the air high overhead. The flare was gone.
The Darkness rolled on. It had been sweeping across the vast lake as it approached, and soon its leading edge had almost reached the lakeshore where they'd been just moments ago. Only a little sliver of lake still remained, narrowing rapidly — and for some reason even the bit of water left in that sliver seemed to be flowing away too (disrupted by the Darkness, apparently).
A scant few seconds later the lake had vanished entirely, nothing left of it but a wide strip of brown mud.
For a moment more Dean could still pick out the lakeshore, though. He could still see the line of pale sand where they'd landed after battling the waves. And there was the little winding stream... there the flattened patch of grasses where Dean had slept in Cas's feathers... there, the place where Dean had thought, just moments ago, while preening Cas's feathers in the sunlight, Castiel sprawled out blissfully under Dean's hands, Maybe I could stay here a while with Cas...
Just a few days with Cas.
Just a day or two...
The lakeshore, the grasses, the stream — it all disappeared, all of it, into the wall of black smoke.
When the Darkness ate up the stream, the land actually fractured, a huge fissure cracking wide open that extended far down below ground-level. The fissure yawned wider, and it became clear that the Darkness wasn't just rolling across the surface of the Sun; it was extending down too, down below the surface, long tendrils of thick smoke worming their way down, eating their way through rock and earth effortlessly. The fissure gaped open, twisting and widening with a deep, almost sub-sonic groan. As it ripped wider, it extended forward — right under Castiel, who gave a huff of alarm and gained a little altitude. Dean peered down over Cas's shoulder and caught a glimpse of bright colors far below— round colored eggs, it seemed, nestled next to each other like jewels in a filigree of white.
In one "egg" was a glimpse of a mountain-range; in another a sunny beach. In a third something that looked like houses, or maybe a little town.
Each egg was a world of its own.
Worlds upon worlds, full of meadows and oceans and cities... peaceful forests... beloved homes.
Thousands upon thousands of individual Heavens. Linked by a filigreed network of white corridors.
But tongues of Darkness-smoke were reaching down and snaking forward, wrapping around one egg-world after another. Something seemed to go catastrophically wrong with the structure that was holding the egg-worlds in place, and the eggs began to tumble around, a few shattering entirely. Dean caught one awful glimpse of tiny figures scrambling out of a little broken egg-world and trying to dash for cover. Some angels had burst out of the filigree-corridors as well, transitioning into their dragon-forms in a flash of an eye. They began darting around, trying to scoop up the little running figures
Cas hesitated a little, veering slightly downward. He was just starting to go into a shallow dive, clearly thinking of going down to try to help, when a vast flood of Darkness poured across the entire fissure, sweeping forward underneath Cas.
"Go, go, go!" called Dean. Cas gave a rough grunt, pulled out of his shallow dive and began climbing as fast as he could. Below him, all the little Heavens popped, like so many soap bubbles, as the dark smoke swept over them. Soon they were lost to view, and below Cas's wings was nothing but black smoke.
Gabriel, still behind them but now a little bit higher, let out another of his trumpeting alarm-calls. Cas had soon regained his lost altitude, and all four angels got ahead of the Darkness-smoke, but Cas was breathing heavily now, tired from the rapid climb. Soon the three smaller angels had pulled a little in front.
Dean glanced back at Sam to find him looking very grim. Sam met Dean's eyes silently, and Dean stared back at him, wordless. What could they even do?
Sam said something. But the wind was howling so loud that Dean couldn't hear Sam at all. "What?" called Dean.
Sam pointed forward, toward Cas's head, and mouthed one word at Dean, carefully and slowly:
Pray.
Ah, yes. There was something they could do after all.
Dean prayed. And he knew Sam was praying too.
You can do it, Cas. thought Dean, turning to face front again, leaning his face down into Cas's feathers to try to focus his thoughts. You can do this.
Go, Cas. Go. Go. Go.
Maybe the prayer helped. Maybe the night of rest had helped too, or the "recharging;" maybe the neck-preening, even. Whatever the reason, Cas seemed to regain some energy, his wings whipping at the air in quick, shallow strokes. Soon his speed had really picked up, and he pulled up even with the smaller angels again.
"Go, Cas, go!" prayed Dean, now muttering the words out loud, right into Cas's feathers. "You're going like a goddam cheetah! Keep it up!" Then he corrected himself: "Wait — like a peregrine falcon! Fastest animal in the world, right? You're a falcon, Cas, look at you go!"
Then Dean corrected himself again, a faint grin coming to his face this time: "Wait. Like an Impala!" Because that's what Cas was. Cas was like the Impala! Unstoppable! Unbeatable! Crossing a continent in a single night... bounding forward, engine roaring, devouring the miles, carrying Sam and Dean wherever they needed to go. Nothing could catch the Impala. Nothing.
Dean's prayer had lapsed now into sort of a wordless image directed at Cas, a (somewhat illogical) image of Cas as a winged black Impala surging tirelessly forward. Illogical it may have been, but as Dean focused his whole mind on the idea, Cas gave a snort and a sudden burst of acceleration seemed to hit him — the sort of acceleration he'd had yesterday when riding the solar flare. The sort that seemed to mean that one of Dean's prayers had really hit home.
Soon Cas's wings were moving so fast they seemed just two black blurs on either side.
Like the Impala, Dean thought again, closing his eyes.
You're my Baby, Cas. (There was another surge of speed.)
Dean even leaned onto his right foot a little, for luck, pressing it down into Cas's back a little as if he could somehow ram an imaginary gas pedal to the floor. Like the Impala! Nothing can stop you! You're my Baby! Go, Baby, GO!
Another snort. Cas blazed forward. He was soon leading the three smaller dragons again; in fact, the other three rapidly rearranged to start drafting off of Cas's lead position. Soon Balthazar had positioned himself just off Cas's left wingtip, and Anna off Cas's right, with Gabriel just behind her. Cas somehow seemed to pull them all forward.
But, when Dean snuck a glance behind, it seemed the Darkness had accelerated too.
Dean kept up the Impala-prayer-image for as long as he could, his head buried down in Cas's feathers, with Sam hunkered down close behind him. Now and then Dean raised his head to try to get a glimpse ahead, but the wind was so strong that it was hard to even see anything. Cas had to be going at least seventy miles an hour by now, if not more, and whenever Dean peeked forward, his eyes were soon streaming with tears from the wild wind. It was hard even just to draw a real breath of air. Dean kept sneaking short glimpses forward, though, hoping that they would soon reach "the Stones," or whatever turned out to be at the center of the circle of open landscape.
But all Dean could make out from here was some kind of hazy patch of cloud or fog that still seemed dozens of miles off, visible only as a fuzzy white blob outlined against the far wall of the Darkness.
And then, on one of Dean's periodic glimpses ahead, he spotted something.
Lines of light.
Sparks and streams of light. Had they reached the Stones? But, no, they were nowhere near the center of the circle yet; the lines of light seemed to be emerging from a clump of forested hills that was quite close, only a mile or so ahead.
Lightning, it looked like.
As they got closer Dean realized it was an entire web of lightning bolts, all shooting up into the sky. The lightning bolts got denser and more frequent as they approached, soon forming almost a wall.
A wall that they were headed directly towards.
"Oh, that's not good," Dean said — or, tried to say, the wind still so strong that he could barely even speak.
"Cas!" Sam hollered from over Dean's shoulder. "Lightning! Up ahead! Look out!"
But Cas only gave a tiny nod. He had his ears pricked forward now, studying what was ahead of him, but he kept going straight. Straight toward the lightning.
"This is not good!" Sam hollered into Dean's ear. "What is that? Does Cas see it?"
"Don't know!" Dean yelled back to Sam. Dean shot another glance backwards. The three smaller dragons were still positioned just off Cas's wingtips, and all three seemed to be looking forward, their ears pricking up too. But they didn't stop flapping, and indeed they couldn't stop; the wall of Darkness was still so close behind them that it almost seemed that Dean could reach right out and touch it.
"He's gonna run right into the lightning!" said Sam, screaming into the wind.
"Don't know that he has much choice!" shouted Dean, gesturing back at the Darkness. "It's almost on us!"
Cas flew on, and all Dean and Sam could do was hang on. It looked like they were flying right into a gigantic illuminated spider-web now, a spider-web of electricity that stretched for miles to either side. Surely it was going to just incinerate them if they flew into it?
Sam tapped Dean's shoulder and pointed past Cas's right wing. Dean glanced over and saw that another hill-top, a few miles away from the dramatic lightning-web, seemed to be be surrounded by sparks of color that zinged through the air like fireworks, all in lines of bright blue and yellow. And in the other direction, beyond Cas's left wing, was an arrangement of no less than nine fat tornados, of all the things, all spaced out in a tidy formation almost like a set of gigantic bowling-pins.
Beyond that, at the next hill over, were some wobbling blue-and-white things that Dean slowly realized were seven huge waves of water. They were moving; Dean stared at them, baffled, and finally realized the waves of water weren't just "moving;" they were walking, pacing to and fro like animated water-giants. Each one was thousands of feet high.
The water-giants left huge muddy tracks as they walked; the tracks led back down the hills toward the fresh-water lake that had emptied so mysteriously just a few minutes earlier.
"What... the hell... are those?" Dean muttered. Cas let out an mm-mmm sound, shaking his head as if to say, I have no idea. Cas had slowed again now, his head angling right and left as if he were trying to puzzle out what to do. As Dean sat up and peered farther around, he realized the strange weather phenomena were arranged in a big curving line. Lightning-bolts, blue-and-yellow fireworks, walking water-giants, the row of tornadoes — they all seemed arranged to form part of a gigantic circle that was positioned just inside the Darkness-smoke. A circle that was perfectly centered around the little white cloud blob in the middle.
"This is some serious-ass magic," Sam commented from behind Dean. "You think the Darkness is causing it? A trap for us, maybe?"
"If it's the Darkness, why isn't it all just... darkness?" pointed out Dean. He gestured at the wall of black smoke behind them. "Like that. What's with the lightning and water and all? Why isn't it just black smoke?"
"Hell if I know," said Sam.
A bark from Gabriel drew their attention, and they looked back to see that some advance tendrils of Darkness-smoke were almost licking at Gabriel's tail now. They had to keep going forward.
Cas was forced to pick up speed again as they drew closer to the lightning-web. Dean could feel him hesitating, though, and, watching his ears flick around as he looked from side to side, Dean realized Cas was trying to pick the safest course. Probably assessing whether he could zip between two of the water-giants, or past the tornadoes.
But Gabriel trumpeted again. Dean glanced back and found the Darkness was actually reaching out some long tendrils of dark smoke above Cas's back, almost reaching to Cas's wings — and to Sam! Dean turned forward again and screamed, "GO, Cas, it's ON US, GO, GO, we don't have time!" Cas glanced back and gave a sharp snort of alarm; as he turned his head forward again he accelerated hard. Dean tried to get the flying-Impala image back in his head, in case that would help, and Cas went into almost a hyper-speed sprint of flapping, so fast now that Dean began to worry the wind might tear him and Sam right off of Cas's back. He felt Cas's feathers clamping down hard around his legs. Sam had grabbed on to Dean's waist again, muttering, "Holy shit!" into Dean's ear.
There was no way Cas could keep up this speed. Dean could only hang on, thinking, Go, Cas, go, go, go, as Cas hurtled directly at the vast wall of crackling lightning-bolts, which were so dense now that they formed almost a solid wall.
But they had no choice.
And then, as they drew closer, a neat round gap appeared in the web of lightning bolts. Cas saw it and angled toward it, letting out a throaty roar to the other angels. He gave one last burst of frantic flaps as they hurtled at the gap. It seemed tiny, too small, but at the last second Cas folded in his wings and shot into the lightning-wall like an arrow...
... and into what turned out to be a tunnel of lightning. Massive bolts of electricity crackled and sizzled around them. The very air seemed to have pressure; there was sensation of terrifying electrical potential all around them. Dean felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck, and even Cas's feathers began to stand on end, his whole back fluffing up and his neck-plumes sticking almost straight out into a fuzzball of static electricity. A glowing ball of light even appeared on one of Cas's wings, right near his alulas, buzzing and sparking. It didn't seem to burn his feathers, but just sat there, a buzzing ball of light a couple feet wide, like a strange passenger that had decided to hitch a ride. Cas flinched, snorting and flapping the wing hard as if to try to shake it off, but it seemed to cling to his feathers as if it were made of velcro. But a moment later, just as Cas emerged from the other side of the lightning-wall into clear air, the buzzing ball of light rolled silently down his wing, floated off his wing-tip and evaporated in mid-air.
And they were through. The wall of lightning was behind them. Gabriel, Anna and Balthazar shot through behind them.
"St. Elmo's fire!" Sam called out, looking back. "That was St. Elmo's fire! I never thought I'd see any! Look, Gabe's got one too." Gabriel was actually turning in somersaults in mid-air as he tried to shake his own weird little lightning-ball off of his left wing, snapping at it and growling. Cas finally veered back toward him and barked some kind of gust of hot air at the lightning-ball, and it disappeared.
The four dragons had to slow a little on the other side of the lightning, all of them seemingly a little out of breath. Dean (and Sam too probably) had been blown entirely out of mental "prayer-mode" by the encounter with the lightning-wall. Dean tried to recapture his flying-Impala image, but the lightning and tornados and water-giants all around were proving to be a bit too distracting. Not to mention the static-electricity shocks; at least half Cas's feathers were still fuzzy with static electricity, sticking out in all directions, and sparks were literally flying off his feathers, some of them sparking at Dean's hands whenever he readjusted his hold on Cas's feathers. Cas finally shook himself all over like a dog, several times, clearly trying to get his feathers settled down. He was still airborne, but he (and the other three angels too) seemed to be only drifting along slowly; they all seemed to be having some real trouble getting up to speed again.
Dean glanced behind and realized they were out of time. The gigantic, mile-high tsunami of Darkness-smoke was on them. It was rolling right up to the lightning-wall.
Where it stopped dead.
Or rather, the lightning seemed to be zapping it into pieces. Darkness-smoke kept trying to push through, but the bits that managed to sneak past the lightning-bolts seemed fragmented and confused. They merely wafted around harmlessly and dissippated — mere bits of smoke now, it seemed, instead of an organized, destroying force.
On the right and the left, the blue-and-yellow fireworks and the tornados were having similar effects. Farther away the walking water-giants were doing a more direct attack, striding around slamming their big water limbs at the Darkness-smoke. The water-giants got a little smaller in the process, occasional sluices of water pulling free and raining down on the landscape below, but the Darkness had been stalled.
"What the..." muttered Dean. Could it be? Had the Darkness really been stopped?
Sam said, "It's a wall! Isn't it? It's a wall to hold the Darkness back?" Cas gave an uncertain grunt and banked his wings to go into a wide, slow circle, studying the lightning-wall. He was calling constantly to the other angels now, in a series of gruff roars and grunts, his ears flicking right and left constantly and his head angling around as he tried to figure out what was going on.
As Cas sailed around in his scouting circle, Dean glanced down past Cas's neck to the ground far below. And he spotted a tiny colored figure moving along a rocky ridge below the lightning.
It looked like... somebody dressed in red?
Somebody dressed in long flowing clothing of red. Long loinclothes and robes, almost. Somebody who was running around on the ridge below... running amazingly fast, it seemed, and swinging something that looked like...
"An... axe?" Dean said. Cas flicked an ear back and Dean said, "There's a guy down there — at ten o'clock, Cas, almost right under us — a guy with an axe. Wait, wait..." Dean (and Sam, and Cas) peered at the figure. "A double-headed axe," Dean added.
"And there's another guy over there, under the fireworks," Sam said, pointing over to the hill that seemed to be the center of the blue-and-yellow streaks of light. At three o'clock, Cas, about a mile out." Cas veered over toward Sam's sighting. Sam was right; there was another person there too, this one wearing...
Blue and yellow.
It was a combination of colors that seemed rather familiar.
In fact the guy's whole outfit seemed familiar. And his posture, and his dark skin; and then the man lifted one arm up toward the sky, the other elbow bent sharply back, in what Dean realized was a classic archer's stance.
"Bow and arrow," said Dean. The man in blue-and-yellow loosed an arrow into the sky, and the arrow streamed a trail of blue-and-yellow fire behind it. The fireworks were arrows.
"OSHOSSI!" Sam and Dean yelled at the same moment, just as Cas let out his own roar of recognition.
"It's Oshossi!" Sam cried. "With his arrows! The fireworks are his arrows! Look, it's holding the Darkness back!"
"The other guy, the lightning guy, that's got to be Shango!" Sam added a second later, pointing back at the man with the double-headed axe. Cas was nodding as Sam explained to Dean, "Shango and his double-headed axe, he's the god of thunder and lightning, remember?"
"It's the orishas, Cas, it's the ORISHAS!" yelled Dean. "They must've come to try to help!" Cas wheeled back toward the other angels, calling the news to them. Then he turned back to Oshossi and Shango and let out a positively ear-splitting roar. Crashes of thunder and lightning came back, the whole lightning-wall sparking, a shower of arrows shooting into the sky from Oshossi's mountain. Cas kept roaring (it was so loud it was making Dean's head ring), and the tornados bobbed and swung, and even watery blue giants bellowed and raised their hands, as the orishas greeted Castiel in return.
"Holy smokes, Dean, all the orishas, look, they're trying to hold the Darkness back," called Sam, "and, look, it's working! Look, look, there's lots of them! That's got to be Yemanja there with the ocean-giants, goddess of the sea, don't you think? Look, over there, that's rivers, rivers in the air, look at that woman underneath, that's got to be Oshun— they're all here!"
And indeed they were. Orishas were stationed on every mountaintop, dozens of them. They seemed positioned every few miles, most of them on the tops of the highest hills, scattered around a huge circle that must have been a hundred miles in diameter. And, it was clear now, they making a sort of a gigantic fence to keep the Darkness out — presumably to try to defend the mysterious white fog-blob in the center (the "Stones," or whatever it was).
Every orisha seemed to be organizing some kind of counterattack according to that orisha's particular skills: walls of wind from one mountain, animated rivers coiling around in the air at the next one. Cas had gained a little more altitude now as he surveyed the area (he was still roaring greeting after greeting) and as he got higher, even more orishas began to come into view. One hill was topped by a vortex that seemed composed of nothing but bits of straw; another seemed populated by an army of floating fishes. Cas swooped in a huge circle, apparently determined to greet all the nearby orishas personally, and when he glided back to Oshossi's hill, Dean even spotted a few dark dots racing along the mountain ridge just inside the lightning-wall, snapping at stray bits of Darkness as they went. It seemed even Oshossi's two wolves had come too.
"YEAH! OSHOSSI! YEAH! YEAH!" Sam was screaming by now. He slapped Dean's shoulder so enthusiastically Dean almost got knocked off his feather-saddle.
Dean didn't mind at all. "YOU ROCK!" he bellowed, waving one arm exuberantly at Oshossi. "YOU FUCKING ROCK, ORISHAS!"
And he was pretty sure he saw Oshossi flash a smile at them in return.
Then a strange ripple in the air caught Dean's eye, low down on another hilltop. There was a boom of thunder, and a doorway appeared. A thin dark figure stepped into view, with another orisha just behind him. The dark figure raised one hand toward Cas, stepped back out of view and disappeared.
"Elegua!" said Dean, pointing down below. But Elegua was gone — only to reappear on another hilltop nearby, with another ripple and another boom.
"Elegua's opening gates!" said Sam. Cas veered over to the new gate, but Elegua had disappeared from that one too — and reappeared on the next hill over. Cas and Gabriel both followed, both of them snorting with excitement now.
Through some gates came orishas — it seemed Elegua was helping them hop from hill to hill to set up more defenses.
And then, through other gates, regular-looking people appeared. Dozens of people, all stepping through the gate single-file. All, incongruously, were wearing business suits.
"What the..." muttered Dean, but it began to make sense when the people in the suits began throwing their heads back and opening their mouths. Out of their mouths flew bright streamers of light that seemed to unfold, opening up and unfurling and twisting in a blink of an eye to become...
Feathered dragons.
"Angels!" said Dean. "Angels, Cas!" Cas gave a snort of fire this time, accompanied by a sort of body-wide flinch and a little flap. Gabriel, flying nearby, did almost exactly the same thing: a cough of fire and a flurry of startled little flaps. Surprise, Dean realized. They're surprised. This has startled them.
"New angels," Sam said. "With vessels. That's unusual, Cas?" Cas gave a whole series of emphatic nods (Dean interpreted that as "This is extremely unusual, Sam!") Cas was still staring at the new angels as Sam added, "Are these angels from inside the Sun? I mean, not just, um, dead angels like you? Sorry, you know what I mean — I mean, not angels that were stuck here on the outside, but the ones who've never died and who were just in Heaven like usual?"
Cas nodded again, letting out another snort of fire. He was flying in a tight circle now above the angel-gate (along with Gabriel, Anna and Balthazar, who were all wheeling around within a few wing-lengths of each other, all apparently fascinated by the new arrivals). Together they watched one new angel after another leap into the air. Dean felt a shaking under his feet and realized Cas was actually vibrating, shaking all over, all his muscles trembling. Some kind of intense emotion seemed to have come over him at the sight of his fellow angels appearing. But what emotion?
Fear?
Anger?
Excitement, maybe? Hope?
One of the new dragons had beautiful silver plumage, offset by an ebony-black belly, and this one soon veered over toward Cas and the others, flapping hard to get over to them. It was letting out snort after snort of fire, and as it came, it let out a roar that seemed more than a little alarming. The new dragon had its ears pricked forward, though, and its feet seemed relaxed, tucked up by the belly with the talons curled closed. Not really in attack-mode, Dean thought. Just excited, maybe? Excited like Cas?
The silver dragon roared again as it drew close; a roar of greeting, maybe? Maybe so, for Cas called back (also with his ears pricked forward). It swooped up next to him and actually gave Cas a quick nuzzle on the cheek, and he gave it one in return. A friend, then.
When the new dragon caught sight of Sam and Dean, it gave a start of surprise, and even a little burbling noise of greeting. Then it let out another snort of surprised fire at the sight of Gabriel, and Balthazar and Anna, and had to go over to greet them too.
Dean studied the plumage color: silver, with a black belly. Silver jacket? Or grey jacket? And a black shirt...Who's that?
He thought a moment. Friend of Cas's... was probably inside Heaven... Recognized me and Sam.
"Hannah," Dean guessed. Cas nodded.
"Aw," said Sam. "Hannah just found out Cas is alive. And that Gabriel is, too, and the others. Must be quite a surprise."
"It's a nice surprise," said Dean, patting Cas through his feathers. "Speaking from experience."
Several other angels flew up too, all in dragon form, to greet Castiel and the others. But they couldn't linger long; the orishas were still hard at work, but more tongues of Darkness-smoke were starting to push through the orisha's barriers. Cas soon let out a series of ear-splitting bellows. All the angels jumped in mid-flight and turned to look at him. More bellows followed from Cas, and soon all the new angels had veered away to help patrol the most thinly-defended areas, the areas between orisha-hills.
"Still a commander," commented Sam from behind. Dean could hear the smile in his voice. Cas only let out an odd little sigh. The other angels seemed to have listened to Cas, and soon he'd taken up a pattern of circling back and forth along the orisha-line, as if checking on everybody else. But Dean knew Cas was still pretty stunned at the arrival of the other angels; he could still feel Castiel trembling, under the feathers.
"The cavalry's here, huh, buddy?" Dean said at last, reaching down a hand and stroking Cas's back.
Cas let out another rough sigh. It sounded both tired and grateful.
Dean added, "Must be nice to have your family show up after all, to help you out at last."
At that, Cas twisted his head sideways to give Dean a long look out of one narrowed blue eye. Something in Cas's expression made Dean wonder if there had been something particularly stupid about Dean's last comment. Then Cas gave another sigh, this one somewhat exasperated (or maybe it was a laugh?). He actually rolled his eyes, shook his head a little, and turned his head forward again.
"What did that mean?" Dean whispered over his shoulder to Sam.
Sam was laughing a little. He explained, "I think that meant, his family was already here." Cas nodded again and embarked on a long, complex burbling grumble of cryptic commentary that went on for nearly half a minute, looking back at Dean now and again with blue eyes that were now wide and sparkling. Whatever he was saying, he obviously had a lot of opinions on the subject.
Dean was about to say, Oh, your family was already here - right, Gabriel was here. And Balthazar and Anna. It wasn't till Cas twisted his head almost all the way around, apparently just in order to give Dean a quick lick on the forehead, that Dean realized what Castiel had really been saying.
Dean could only pat Cas's big velvety black nose in return, muttering, "Right. Yeah. Got it. Right back at you." Maybe it wasn't all that articulate a response, but Cas seemed to understand.
There weren't an infinite number of angels, of course; just a few dozen, in fact. Cas seemed to be trying to reposition them here and there, redeploying them where they were most needed, but even so the Darkness smoke-streamers were sneaking through with increasing frequency.
And then a red streak flashed across the sky, parallel to the wall of Darkness. It seemed to be carrying some kind of fiery sonic boom with it, some great compression of air that pushed the Darkness-smoke back and threw it into disarray. Cas, and the other angels, all swung in mid-air to stare at it. The red streak wheeled around and made another wild pass, streaking across a mile of sky in mere moments, with another burst of wind that again blew the Darkness back. The red streak paused for a moment; it was a dragon.
A red dragon.
"It's Anna!" said Dean. "Jesus. Is that a sonic boom? Or has she supercharged her fire or something?"
"She's carrying something," said Sam. Dean squinted, and the next time the red streak paused, he saw that Sam was right: there was a tiny figure on Anna's back, scarves of bright yellow trailing in the air behind her.
Sam said, "Yansa! It's got to be Yansa!"
"Who the hell is that?"
"Orisha of the wind!" said Sam. "I think she made the tornadoes. And I think some of the lightning was hers too. She controls air. Oh, I get it, Anna's flying Yansa around so Yansa can do, like, moving wind-walls. Jeez, look at them go!" Even as he spoke Anna started another tremendously fast dive across the sky, accelerating into a red blur. A sonic-boom-like foomp sound reached their ears a moment later, and a pressure blast rippled across the wall of Darkness-smoke, a blast of wind that must have been going a thousand miles an hour.
Balthazar, not too far off Cas's wingtips, let out a ringing cry and swooped down toward Oshossi. A moment later Balthazar was charging back up into the air again. now with Oshossi standing on him, both feet spread wide Balthazar's back, bow and arrow at the ready.
"Show-off," Dean muttered. "He's standing up."
"Yeah, no feather-seatbelts for him," said Sam. "No fair."
Balthazar flew up high near the lightning-wall, Oshossi somehow magically keeping his feet, and then Balthazar copied Anna's strategy, swooping down parallel to the Darkness smoke in a blistering fast dive. Balthazar tucked his wings in too (maybe getting them safely out of reach of Oshossi's arrows) and Oshossi let loose a virtual storm of blue-and-yellow arrow-bolts, peppering the Darkness for the whole length of the dive and fragmenting all the tongues of Darkness-smoke that were trying to sneak through.
"Orishas and angels!" Sam said. "Killer combo."
In another direction now there was a green streak across the sky that seemed to warp the very fabric of reality as it went, some kind of knot in the air forming that swallowed the Darkness down.
"Gabriel picked up Elegua!" Dean said. "Holy shit, this really is the All-Stars. Oh man. Actually Elegua could eat him alive. Hope Gabriel's up to that."
Sam said, "If anybody can hold his own against Elegua, it's Gabe."
"Assuming Gabe doesn't piss him off instantly with some stupid joke," said Dean.
"Yeah, that's definitely a possibility," Sam said. "Maybe keep your mouth shut for once, Gabe." Sam fell silent, and when Dean glanced back he found that Sam's lips were moving silently as he watched Gabriel and Elegua soar toward the Darkness. Sam gave Dean a sheepish smile. "Just sending out a prayer," he explained. "Can't hurt."
With Gabriel now carrying Elegua, Balthazar carrying Oshossi and Anna carrying Yansa, the orisha-dragon combination was proving formidable. Castiel was soon bellowing out some kind of announcement, and soon all the other angels (in their dragon forms) seemed to have gotten the idea and were swooping down to pluck up the other orishas as well. Within minutes the sky was peppered with colorful missiles charging from side-to-side across the sky.
And the Darkness was halted. It wasn't beaten back, but neither was it advancing. It stood still all around them, a vast vertical wall of jet-black storm-cloud, with the angels and orishas defending a huge circle of clear air in the middle. Far, far ahead, hundreds of miles away, Dean could see the far wall of the circle of Darkness-smoke, with yet more angels in the distance holding that wall back too.
Like we're in the eye of a hurricane, Dean thought. Hurricane on all sides, but clear air in the middle.
"But they're just holding it back," Dean said to Sam, the realization dawning on him slowly. "They're not beating it. They're still just holding it back temporarily. What are they gonna do to actually stop it? They can't keep this up forever."
"They're just buying us time," said Sam. "Just time. It's still up to us to stop it for good." Cas flicked his ears back toward Sam and nodded.
And then Cas changed course. He gave one last call to the other angels, spread his wings wide, wheeled away from the Darkness entirely, and put the dramatic battle at their back. And he began flapping again, a steady even rhythm. He was heading straight to the center again. To the little patch of white fog, and whatever lay within it.
Does it have to be us? Dean almost said. Can't someone else do it?
But Cas clearly felt he had to be the one to fly to the mysterious spot at the center.
And if Cas felt he had to go there, Dean would go with him. Of course. Obviously.
Gabriel let out a bugling cry behind them, and many other distant calls sounded too. By now Dean could pick out some of the voices. He recognized Balthazar and Anna, and was pretty sure he heard Hannah as well.
Cas called back — a series of loud throaty calls that sounded almost mournful. But he kept flying forward. Dean knew it was a goodbye.
"Your family's still with you, Cas," murmured Dean, stroking Cas's warm velvety skin again through the feathers. "We're with you all the way." Cas gave a long, slow sigh, and Dean felt the faint vibration of a purr under his hands as Castiel flew on.
A/N -
Just in case it wasn't clear: In my universe, Hannah never died. :)
Hope you enjoyed this! Please drop a line if there was something you liked. Thank you for reading.
