AN: Thanks for the reviews, and for understanding. You guys rock.
When he turns a corner and sees a guy at the end of the hall, way too far away to jump, he immediately steps backwards, praying (to whom, he has no idea) that he didn't see him.
He waits for several long seconds, not breathing, and finally, footsteps come into audible range. They don't sound rushed. The guy will be surprised.
The moment something starts to come around the corner, Dean throws himself forward, barreling into a pasty guy with pale blue eyes who lets out an alarmed yelp as he's crushed for a moment under Dean.
Except dammit, this guy feels solid, he has a body. Dean's not sure it's enough to tip the scales, but it's definitely a disadvantage on his part.
So before he can move a muscle or say a word, Dean clamps his hand down over the guy's forehead, and immediately starts feeling around.
Fairly quickly he comes upon a view of the tunnel from what appears to be the guy's perspective. He rewinds it, as quickly as he can, because the guy is beginning to gather himself enough to struggle under Dean's grip. Apparently he can't teleport. Dean's not even gonna question that.
The path is long, and sinuous, and for several seconds as he watches it unfold Dean wonders how he's going to remember all the turns. But it turns out not to be as long as he feared when it turns abruptly into a wall, slides rapidly down through the darkness for a few seconds, and after a few more chambers ends up in what is very obviously a dark, dank throne room.
Figures that hell would be full of secret passageways.
Armed with all he needed, Dean has one moment of panic as he tries to figure out what to do with this guy that will prevent him from going back to Crowley. And suddenly, he remembers the sure weakness of having a body, the one that screwed him over and ultimately landed him down here.
One good punch, and the guy is out like a light. Dean places his hand on his forehead again and concentrates deeply. He's been experimenting with taking away demonic abilities for a brief period of time, so he could make an attempt to eliminate this guy's teleporting, but the best way to eliminate him as a problem would be to kill him. Without Ruby's knife, an impossible feat.
Or at least, it used to be.
His success rate hasn't exactly been high, and so far he's done very little practicing on higher-level demons, but maybe… just maybe…
He doesn't know how long he spends kneeling over the body, ignoring the sounds in the cells around him, just focusing as hard as he can. Concentrating all his power into one part of his form—the palm pressed against the demon's forehead.
When he's not sure how he can possibly gather up any more, he pushes that power downward.
The guy's eyes fly open, and he instinctively gasps for air, but none is able to enter. His entire skeleton lights up orange, and Dean grins in wild delight as that light flickers and slowly dies.
Prying open a nearby cell, tossing the body in, and closing it back up is quick business. For a long moment after he steps back, he just stares down at his hands, flexing them, thinking how maybe being trapped in hell was the best thing that could've happened to him. Time is expanded to a ridiculous degree around here, there are no regulations, and he has an endless supply of demons and souls to practice his abilities on.
It does nothing to lessen his outrage at the people who sent him down here, but still.
Shaking his head in something close to disbelief at his luck, he starts striding down the hall along the path he saw in the demon's mind, soon coming to the wall the path went right through. It's in a blind spot, out of the sight of any nearby cells.
For a moment he just surveys the wall, eyebrow raised. At first it looks like a pretty ordinary stone wall, but after a few seconds of inspection he finds the long creases signaling the presence of a wide door.
He places his hand against it, experimenting, and pushes.
It spins like a revolving door, and he quickly slips through. In the moment the torchlight outside illumines the interior, he can see a space of about ten square feet that's flat before the pathway disappears down what appears to be a long stairway.
Then the door shuts, and he is left in total darkness.
He stands still for several seconds, and starts cautiously forward, feeling around with his foot before he puts any weight down. The glimpse of the space the torchlight afforded him was enough that when the floor does drop, he's not surprised by it.
The descent into darkness is rather uneventful. He goes as fast as he can, but still with caution, knowing that while he'll be completely unharmed even if he does trip and plummet head over heels down the steps, it could lose him the element of surprise.
After a while he senses… something, coming up ahead. He advances slowly, and finds that the floor has stopped dropping with every step, and not only has it leveled out, but when he puts his hands out in front of him, they are met with a stone wall. He blinks, surprised. Does he have some kind of darksense? Something that lets him see without light? A question for later.
He feels around the wall and quickly finds a crease just like the one before. Before he pushes, he stops for a moment, listening, feeling for what—and more importantly, who—lies beyond the stone. As far as he can tell, the chambers stand deserted. That's good, and not too surprising—as far as he's heard, Crowley's not exactly been commissioning frequent meetings. He has no plans, no business to attend to. Dean has to question just what he spends his days doing.
He reviews the plan that he's created over the many months he's been wandering. It's really not much of one, but it's all he's got. The version that stems from nobody being around still could branch off into a couple different subsections, depending on what he actually finds as he spends more time down here.
Of course, he'd be a fool to forget the one piece of advice given to him shortly before he was yanked down here.
"His mother, this Scottish witch called Rowena…"
From what that demon told him, this witch is just manipulating Crowley for her own purposes. So his next move will depend on how well that's going. If Crowley is decidedly under her thumb and she's basically running things through him, it will make things much more difficult for him. If she's hit a road block early on, he can use that to his advantage. Either way, having a conversation with her is perhaps the most important item on his agenda right now. But he has to catch her at a time when Crowley is not present.
Which could get… annoying.
He's been trying to tweak the appearance of his spirit, as the first demon he spoke to here suggested he could, but he hasn't yet figured out how to make any substantial progress, at least to the point of unrecognizability. Or if he has, he can't tell, because he hasn't seen his own reflection since he was shoved down here. So, it's conceivable that he could hide away in one of the throne room-adjacent chambers for a very long time without anyone entering, but it can't go on indefinitely, and he needs to have a plan for if he has to explain his presence. At least appearing to be wearing a black suit would be helpful—then all he really needs is confidence, and nobody's going to question him. But he hasn't been able to hack it.
He's not gonna learn anything new just standing here. Gathering himself up, he pushes ever so slightly on the door, opening it up just a crack for him to peek through.
Things seem completely dead on the other side of the door. He sees only a system of stone walls and no demons to speak of. Deciding to risk it, he pushes the wall all the way open and it begins to spin slowly. He quickly sidesteps over to the nearest corner to hide himself behind, but no noise comes to him except for the echo of his own footfalls. Which must sound suspicious, the way they stop and start.
So he resolves to just walk with confidence and regularity through the chambers. At least nobody will find any cause for suspicion until they see him.
Walking so conspicuously in such a dangerous environment gives the chambers the appearance of flying by as he strides through them. He doesn't encounter another soul. Very soon he comes upon a door, which he presses his ear against for several long seconds. Hearing nothing, he pulls it slightly open and peers through.
Across the room a small ginger woman sits up straight on what is obviously a throne. She's clothed in a simple long black dress, her curly red hair spilling down her back. Her movements seem almost guilty, as she's caught lounging on the throne when she so clearly shouldn't have been.
She's no demon.
He steps into the room, letting the door shut behind him.