Sam found that the Citadel proved true to its name. As he followed Crowley through the labyrinth of unremarkable, grey stone hallways, it took almost no time at all to realize that the complex must be massive. None of the rooms or corridors he had seen contained windows—he wasn't even sure if they were above ground. Granted, he had no way of knowing if Hell had a sky to distinguish the ground. The stone construction gave the entire place the feeling of a fortress or castle that had somehow been designed without a single aesthetic indulgence.

"This is the Citadel, the heart of Hell," Crowley explained. "It is about thirty square kilometers—think about half the size of Manhattan. Clearly, I won't be showing you the whole thing right now, but we'll hit a few of the highlights. The Citadel contains all of our administrative activities, most of our archives, and our most fortified locations. Beyond the walls of the Citadel is the Central District, which surrounds it on all sides, creating a large buffer zone from the Pits.

"Central District is Hell's metropolitan center. It's surrounded by another wall, which is currently the border between Lilith's forces and our own. Central is roughly the size of the greater New York City area. The majority of our less combative castes reside there, but don't take that to mean that every demon in Central is sweet. They just practice different kinds of cruelty."

"Thanks for the warning." Sam recalled Ruby's brief description of the Central District and its figurative bombs. "Ruby said that there's a prison in Central. Isn't that a bit redundant?"

The archdemon hummed with amused interest at the question. "I suppose it depends on how you look at it. Do you think Hell is a prison? Or maybe you think that we don't have criminals? Or maybe on the other end, that we don't have laws at all?"

"I'm sure Hell has laws," Sam replied. "Otherwise a bureaucrat like you wouldn't have so much power."

Crowley grinned impishly at his astute observation. "Yes. Instead it'd be someone like Lilith. I can't begin to tell you all the bolts that came loose under her brief guidance. It was like watching a child use a Gutenberg to make paper mâché."

Sam raised an eyebrow at Crowley's metaphor. To compare Hell to a Gutenberg Bible seemed like an awfully bold and vain move. Though he had to admit that in terms of the historical significance, the inner workings of Hell probably had a more significant impact than he'd thought. He'd never really given the mechanics of Hell a moment of consideration until recently, which was probably a testament to its effectiveness. Messing with a delicate system was understandably frustrating, but there had been something in the archdemon's voice that went beyond bitterness.

"Your thing with Lilith, it's personal, isn't it?"

Sam's question brought Crowley to a halt. "At the Crossroads, we're entirely business. But the High Council's chamber is not always ruled by calmer heads…. And when you kill my peers and attempt to kill me…. Yes. It's very personal."

"How did you survive?" Sam asked, then quickly added, "I'm guessing combat isn't your strength."

"Combat isn't, but covering my ass is…. Maybe someday you'll convince me to tell you how. But for now, that card will stay up my sleeve." Crowley began walking again and Sam hurried to keep up.

"The archdemons that were killed— What even happens when a demon dies?" Sam had been particularly curious about the subject since becoming involved with Ruby. Neither of them liked to dwell on the possible long-term aspects of their relationship, but occasionally it did keep him up at night.

"When a demon dies on Earth it's not our mess to clean up, but if they die down here usually we have to deal with the shell of their broken soul—the part that walks and talks," Crowley explained.

Sam was a little disappointed that Crowley seemed to be more focused on the practical and physical rather than the subjective experience. In a way it made sense. The guy was some sort of politician or administrator of an entire plane. He had more pressing concerns than something so metaphysical. Despite not getting the answer he'd hoped for, Sam almost didn't mind that much since he was being provided new trivia.

Crowley continued, "Sometimes demons will smoke around down here without taking on a form. Rumor is that if you die like that you'll just disappear. But for the ones with form, lesser corpses are destroyed and honored corpses are entombed. There are less than eighty tombs in Central, featuring a rogues' gallery of Hell's heroes. Most prominent are the Knights of Hell—"

"Knights of Hell?" He remembered some mention of knights when Ruby was looking through the encyclopedia of Hell at Bobby's, but she hadn't elaborated on them at all.

"Very powerful demons, similar to archdemons, but they aren't chosen by their caste—they don't even have a caste. Each one was supposedly recruited personally by Lucifer. Every once in awhile a Knight or two will rise from their tomb in the service of Hell—"

"Rise up?" Sam interrupted the aside with one of his own. "They're like zombie demons?"

"Not really. The tombs are more like where they recover from the injuries. It doesn't matter how bad the damage, if you give a Knight enough time, they'll be back in fighting shape. Apparently the bastards are just really hard to kill."

While Crowley was expounding on some comparatively boring explanation about the theories of the Citadel's masonry, Sam was briefly distracted by an ajar door that opened into a massive library containing hundreds of shelves full of small glass vials. He peeked inside and saw a laboratory setup with several sophisticated workbenches. The equipment was a strange combination of science in the form of precision microscopes and sorcery in the form of runes on the work surfaces.

"One of Morrison's little pet projects."

Sam turned to find that Crowley had backtracked the twenty feet from where he'd last seen his guide, and was standing right behind him.

"Do try to keep up," Crowley instructed. "Or at least make sure we don't get separated."

"Don't want me seeing certain things?" Sam guessed.

"I'm more concerned about you being seen, but that's not actually what I had in mind." Crowley gestured for Sam to continue following him through the halls. After a quick glance back into the lab, Sam allowed the tour to resume. "It's easy to get lost in here—it's actually designed that way. I suspect the intent was equal parts defensive and malicious."

"I thought we were in the nice part of Hell." Sam realized the contradiction in his own statement. "Nevermind. I think I've figured it out."

"Relatively speaking, this is the nice part, but you'll find that everything here has at least some barbed edges. It helps if you can have a sense of humor or professional appreciation for the small torments. Lightheartedness is the most effective way to thicken the hide."

"Lighthearted in Hell." Sam wasn't sure he'd heard of something quite that absurd. "Seriously?"

"It might seem daft now, but hopefully after a while it will make some sense."

Turning a corner, Sam felt a strange sensation of disorientation. He could've sworn that they'd made five consecutive left-turns at relatively even intervals along their walk, but they hadn't retraced any steps. They hadn't taken any stairs and the floor didn't seem to be slanted either.

"Does Hell itself mess with your sanity or is it just the demons in it that do the damage?" Sam asked as he realized there weren't any signs or artwork on the walls to act as a landmark and all the doors were identical.

"That's a tad philosophical for my tastes, but I imagine that most things could drive a person mad if you let them get under your skin," Crowley replied. "You'd be surprised to see some of the dungeons that specialize in breaking souls with a gentle touch. They're not as popular as your burner or blades dungeons, but the results can be astounding."

"How long does it take to break a soul with the gentle approach?"

"Usually around 250 years, local time."

Sam ran the math. If Hell really had an innately toxic effect that was essentially a gentle torture, without reprieve he'd be looking at breaking in only two years, Earth time, on the low end. As he looked back down the unsettlingly drab hallway where they had just come from and realized that he couldn't even remember now whether they'd turned left or right five times in a row. He sighed silently, then continued following Crowley.

They entered a foyer that had at least a dozen other hallways and staircases coming off of it. In the large room there were a handful of creatures moving about. There was almost no uniformity in their appearances. All but one was humanoid. Four had nearly human faces, while the others looked as though they had been spliced with characteristics of animals or natural materials. The overall impression that their appearances gave was disorganized.

"What are they?" Sam asked quietly.

Crowley didn't bother stopping to maintain some polite distance from the creatures while discussing them. He continued walking, though he turned his body slightly to look back at Sam who followed him a few steps behind in mild hesitation.

"Who," Crowley corrected. "They're demons. Not everyone is skilled enough to maintain a more human exterior, and not everyone wants to. If you want to see the ones that are all spikes and viscera, then I suggest the Pits. They love that sort of theatrics. In Central our demons might be a little easier for you to stomach, since they don't spend all their time mutilating souls."

Seeing demons in person, Sam started to understand what Ruby had been talking about months ago. She had told him that demons could take many different forms, but were often the reflections of their twisted and broken souls. He hadn't expected the demons to be literally twisted, but as he approached them he noticed that many lacked any appearance of symmetry. It made some amount of sense that without a high level of concentration or maintenance a self-created form might shift or fade from neglect.

Most of their appearances vaguely indicated some sort of gender, but a few of them were completely androgynous. If their form was a reflection of the self, then he supposed there was a broad spectrum of sexes in Hell. Sam had some trans and genderqueer friends back at Stanford and secretly empathized to the extent that any of them had body dysmorphia. Even before he knew about his demon blood or Abyssal qualities, he had felt like something inside him didn't quite match the exterior. In exposing its demons' inner-workings and self-image, Hell seemed to have actually eliminated one of the major opportunities for an identity crisis that existed for humans. Sam smirked at the idea that maybe, on at least one point, Hell might be a more tolerant environment than Earth.

They entered a large hall that was clearly meant for official gatherings. Based on the locations of the heavy black metal chandeliers, the hall may have normally been filled with three columns of seats or long tables. Currently, the only object in the room, aside from the light fixtures, was the Seat.

At the far end of the hall was a fairly-utilitarian carved wooden chair that appeared to meld into the trunk of a massive tree unlike any tree Sam had ever seen. It must've been thirty feet tall with branches spanning forty or fifty feet, nearly filling the entire last quarter of the hall. The tree's joints were gnarled, but there were no indications of aging or damage such as holes or cracks. The wood was pure black and it lacked leaves to adorn its many spindly branches. It almost seemed dead in appearance, yet Sam felt like that would be a dismissive assumption for something that had such an air of importance.

A male demon stood at attention next to the tree, roughly five feet from the throne. He looked like a somewhat short and stout human, but his skin was almost like grey marble in places. His mouth seemed lipless, making it more of a thin crack than anything else. Solid black eyes could barely be seen below his pronounced brow. He wore scale mail and held a two-handed maul, giving him the overall look of a brute.

"There it is." Crowley's voice carried a little pride in spite of how frequently he must have seen the Seat. "The very center of Hell."

Sam pointed to the demon. "Guard?"

"Something like that. He's a Knight. The Seat doesn't actually need protection, but no one has succeeded in explaining that to Mir. Starting about three weeks ago local time, a handful of the Knights started waking up. This one—" Crowley pointed to the demon, who didn't react at all to being spoken about. In fact, as Sam approached Mir he got the impression that the demon hardly noticed them at all. "He just came straight here and hasn't moved since."

"He's a—" Sam realized that he was about to rudely talk about Mir as if he wasn't there. Turning his body slightly to face the stout demon, Sam started again. "You're a Knight of Hell?"

Mir stood a little taller, trying to instill even more dignity into his already professional stance. Sam couldn't tell exactly where his eyes were looking while they were solid black, but in spite of his head not moving, Sam got the distinct feeling that Mir was watching him.

"Yeah, this one'll talk your ear off if you let him. I'm not even sure if he speaks Abyssal…. Or he could just be a complete cabbage." Crowley said something that Sam assumed was in Abyssal, but Mir didn't react in the slightest. With a quick shrug the archdemon turned and began walking towards a doorway on the right side of the hall. "If you'll follow me. The High Council's chamber is through here."

As Sam turned to go with Crowley, a flicker of color in the sea of grey and black caught his eye. He stopped and turned his head back. For a second he could have sworn that the tree was white with thousands of small red flowers covering its branches, but when he looked back at it the tree was plain ebony. Sam frowned, started to turn again, then saw the flash of white and red from the corner of his eye. Looking back, it was plain once again.

"Cute trick," Sam muttered to himself.

"Did you say something?" Crowley asked from across the hall.

"Just that's a cute trick with the tree," Sam replied as he walked over to the archdemon to continue with his tour, but Crowley looked puzzled.

"Pardon?"

"The light and color flicker with the tree." When Crowley just continued to stare at him in confusion Sam elaborated, "If you look at it straight on it's black and plain, but out of the corner of your eye it's white with red flowers."

The silence that followed made Sam incredibly uncomfortable. Crowley's expression made him wonder if he had just accidentally confessed to being insane— Maybe Hell was getting to him faster than anyone had expected? He wanted the silence to stop, but was worried that he might say something to make it worse. Yet the thing that did break the silence was arguably worse than anything Sam could have said.

Mir's armor rattled and shifted as he turned to face Sam. The knight studied him for a painfully long moment, then gestured for him to come closer. Sam hesitated. Mir clearly had something in mind and it had been triggered by Sam doing something so unprecedented that even Crowley was at a loss.

"You heard the man," Crowley coaxed in a tone that assured Sam that he was equally uncertain of Mir's intent.

Sam cautiously walked toward the mute knight. He wasn't sure what to expect, but it unnerved him. When he got within about ten feet of the throne he felt strangely distracted. He had been focused on Mir, but his attention was gradually drawn to the tree. In an almost dreamlike daze, he fleetingly noticed he was barely aware that Mir and Crowley were still in the room…. There was something more important for him to investigate. As Sam continued forward, in the back of his mind he could hear Crowley telling him to be careful, but he didn't feel in danger.

Without even thinking about it, Sam placed his hand onto the throne's armrest. His eyes rolled back for a second as he felt a bit heady with power. Part of him wanted more, but the surprise of what he'd just done shook him back to reality. He recoiled in alarm and checked his hand for injury, but it seemed fine. Looking back to the throne, he noticed that the place where his hand had touched the armrest had turned white, but quickly faded back to black once he had released it.

Crowley was frozen in wide-eyed shock. Sam stood awkwardly clutching his hand and shaking with nerves. He felt exposed—like a dream involving being naked in class. But this was so much worse in ways that he knew he couldn't even imagine. His stomach sank a little further when he finally looked over at Mir. The knight had returned to standing at attention, but his insignificant mouth had curled into an unsettling smile.

"Well, that is very interesting," whispered Crowley.

"Shall we talk initial terms?"

Crowley relaxed in his office chair, giving the intentional appearance of confidence. He had been a conscientious host so far, but they were about to get down to business and both knew that there was an imbalance in their bargaining power. Crowley had the knowledge and vision, while Sam had some not-yet-understood power. They could each potentially make the other's lives easier or more difficult, but Sam had less of an idea of how to go about it. After netting out their strengths and weaknesses, Sam was pretty sure that he was still in the worse bargaining position, regardless of what had happened with the tree.

"Initial?" Sam raised an eyebrow. "We aren't going to figure this out right now?"

"In order to know what our long-term strategy should be we'll need to do a significant amount of research and private negotiations with the other powers that be down here. I hadn't expected it to be a very involved process, but I also hadn't expected for you to have your little run-in with the Seat," Crowley explained, causing Sam to cringe inwardly at the realization that it was indeed going to have significant repercussions. "Thanks to that new development, we'll have to start from the ground up and I think we both will want some assurances in the meantime."

He didn't like the sound of that. "Assurances?"

"You want to secure protections for your people regardless of how long we spend working out the details and I want some guarantee that you're actually committed to the overall venture." Crowley softly tapped his fingertips on the top of his desk. "So tell me, knowing that we can add to the agreement as we go, what do you want to start with?"

Now that he wasn't under as much time pressure and had seen some of Crowley's influence, Sam took a moment to reassess his goals. Wishing away Lilith or some comparably easy fix was almost certainly impossible if only because Crowley would've had them take care of it in five minutes had that been an option. His host was smart enough to have already tried any quick resolutions, so Sam pushed the big picture from his mind. He had gone there to protect his family and that would stay his primary objective.

"I want my family—that includes close friends who aren't blood relatives—safe from the angels and Lilith. I want them provided for—"

"You know the Citadel is probably the safest place when it comes to angels at the moment," Crowley suggested as he began pouring himself a glass of scotch.

"I don't want them held prisoner or restricted to Hell. Dean would probably..." The thought made Sam feel a little sick. "I don't even want to think about how he'd react to being back down here."

"You could split the lot. Dean and Bobby would be happier on Earth. Meanwhile, Ruby and the pup would be safest—"

Sam shook his head. "I don't want my daughter growing up in Hell."

Crowley looked up from his glass of scotch and raised an eyebrow as a hopeful smile spread across his face. "Is a cigar in order?"

"Let's get back to the terms," Sam evaded the subject.

The less that was said about Kaylee the better. Crowley didn't continue to press the topic, though he did pour Sam a glass and placed it in front of his guest. Sam eyed the beverage, but didn't refuse it.

"Anything else you'd like to add to your list of demands?"

After thinking for a minute or so, Sam replied, "The witches in Ruby's coven and anyone on my list that were killed by the angels—I want them resurrected and provided the same benefits we've been discussing for my other close friends and family."

"Can't do that."

"I know that the Crossroads can resurrect people." He still had the scar in the middle of his back that was evidence of one such temporary-fatality.

"It's not the fact that they're dead; it's the fact that the angels did it," Crowley explained. "We're in the early stages of developing our anti-Heaven capabilities. We can't undo their damage yet. That kind of magic could take a long time to make functional. If we eventually figure out a way to bring them back, then you can exercise the option at that time. Fair enough?"

Sam sighed. He'd hoped that he could just make the deal and fix everything, but it wasn't that easy. Gabin, Pascoe, Seline, the children—almost all of the coven, and an unknown number of friends would remain dead indefinitely. The prospect of eventually bringing them back was more than nothing, but honestly he questioned whether that would be the right thing to do if enough time passed. If their souls weren't in the Pit, pulling them back from Heaven or wherever might cause more harm than good. He'd have to talk with Castiel about the implications, but at least retaining the option was something.

"Fine," Sam agreed. "What do you want from me?"

"Your loyalty and obedience."

He glared at Crowley, but didn't say anything. He'd been waiting for that moment since he'd arrived. Crowley had finally decided to take him for all he was worth and he was basically at the archdemon's mercy, which was a terrifying thought.

Signing away his loyalty and/or obedience could mean any of a number of things, especially when magic was involved. It could merely be causing a breach of the contract if he failed to adhere to his duty—and what was the punishment for breaching a contract in Hell? Alternatively, it could mean having his mind altered to naturally feel loyal and obedient to another. Maybe he would still retain his normal mental capacity, but he would be physically incapable of defying. Sam hoped that they could settle on something that preserved his autonomy.

"When you say obedience…."

"I'm not talking about saying 'jump' and you jump. Think more like an extension of loyalty. You'll make a reasonable and good faith effort to execute my instructions. Also, you'll have a duty to inform me of anything that you think is vital to our purposes."

"I'm not going to betray my family." Sam's eyes narrowed and some of the polite warmth in his voice was replaced with helpless frustration.

"That's fair." Crowley shrugged. "If you find yourself with a legitimate conflict of interest—something that would seriously harm your family—then you have to let me know and I'll find a way to work around it."

"You'll go behind my back."

"Hopefully we won't have to find out. Close enough to fair?"

Sam thought about the conditions for a long while, then added two last points. "You won't do anything unnatural to my mind, without my informed consent. And you will answer my questions. If I'm going to be working for you I'm going to need a lot of information."

Crowley smiled in appreciation of his late additions. "I like your instincts," the archdemon commented. "It'd be a shame to mess them up by fiddling with your mind. Let me get some people looking for your family's sanctuary and we can hammer out the details."

There was a knock on the office door, then after Crowley's invitation a demon brought in a scroll of parchment. Crowley took the scroll and read it for several minutes. One corner of his mouth turned downward. He asked the underling a question in Abyssal. The demon reported on something at length and Crowley nodded thoughtfully before dismissing the subordinate.

"The results from our rescue mission." Crowley held up the scroll. "Which would you like to hear first: the good news, the bad news, or the unexpected news?"

"What marked the start of the apocalypse?" Dean asked.

He figured that if the three of them were measuring the passage of time down to the months, something had to have happened and their reactions seemed to corroborate his theory. Kaylee and Tom's vaguely playful and relaxed demeanor dimmed slightly at a memory. Kaylee was the better of the two at concealing whatever unpleasant feelings had been brought to the surface. Her lips only briefly thinned before she regained a false air of composure. Tom looked down at the floor for a few seconds until Kaylee subtly patted him on the back in reassurance. Dylaniel watched them with what Dean suspected was concern, though the blonde kid was difficult to read.

"Officially, Lucifer getting out of his cage," Kaylee said as she casually paced the room. "But it started brewing long before he made the scene."

"You're from 2009…." Tom thought for a moment as he changed his frame of reference. "In your time things were just starting to go wrong, but things only really began escalating on Earth in 2012. Late 2013 was when the writing was on the wall, and the war more or less started in 2014."

"W-war?" Dean fumbled the word.

"Yeah. The way the apocalypse has shaken out so far is basically as a three-way war," Kaylee explained. "We're fighting for the sovereignty and survival of Earth against the forces of Heaven on one side and the followers of Lucifer—"

"And Lilith before him," Tom interjected.

"—on the other," Kaylee continued. "And when we say war, this is a full-blown war, with a lot of carnage all over the world. The cat's out of the bag on the whole demons, angels, and non-humans thing."

"Heaven and Lucifer's followers are looking to finish the apocalypse by engaging in a battle that will essentially destroy Earth, so our side has been fighting to try to prevent that final battle," Dylaniel added, then his tone turned almost remorseful. "So far, we've been successful at preventing it, but they're doing a good job of not leaving much left for us to fight for."

"There's been considerable death on all sides and a lot of humans taken out in the crossfire. There are some major populations of neutral humans, which we try to avoid—lest we bring the shitstorm upon them. Some humans side with us, others serve Heaven—very few serve Lucifer. It's pretty fucking complicated." Kaylee waved her hands to indicate a big mess.

"So you guys are in a three-way death-match between Earth, Heaven, and Hell?" Dean asked while trying to wrap his head around the alarming news. No wonder New Orleans had looked like the site of a massacre or war; it was exactly that. He'd always wondered what it would be like to live in a world where humans knew about all the things that went bump in the night. Now that he was there, he wanted out. Since hiding in the shadows wasn't necessary, it seemed Heaven and Hell had come out to play hard.

"Not exactly," Kaylee said as she stopped pacing and rested her hands on her hips. "Hell is officially backing the preservation of Earth and contributing demons to our side of the fight."

"What?! Why would they do that?"

Time travel was one thing. Meeting his adult niece… he could somehow roll with that. Even the fucking apocalypse was remotely imaginable. But the idea that Hell would be doing something to help Earth…. Well, that one archdemon in the suit had been anti-Lilith, but he was just some politician out to save his own ass. Dean tilted his head trying to imagine how they could've gotten from point A to B.

"Are you looking for the stated policy argument or the more practical reason?" Kaylee asked.

It was hard for him to imagine Hell having any sort of official policy other than being evil. "Practical, I guess."

"Because it was decreed by the King of Hell," she answered with a strange hint of amusement in her voice.

"I thought Hell was ruled by a council?" The archdemon had mentioned it when he popped into Bobby's house. That had been part of the foundation of the entire conversation.

"It was until it hastily switched over to a divine monarchy."

"So who is the King of Hell?" Dean's question elicited awkward smiles from Kaylee and Tom, while Dylaniel raised an eyebrow as he turned to look from Dean to Kaylee.

"Right now Hell has a queen, and you're looking at her," Kaylee said with a little shrug that didn't quite hide her pride. "But my dad's the one that made Hell back Earth in the apocalypse."