prompt
{
"Monster" is derived from the Latin noun monstrum, "divine portent," itself formed on the root of the verb monere, "to warn." It came to refer to living things of anomalous shape or structure, or to fabulous creatures like the sphinx who were composed of strikingly incongruous parts, because the ancients considered the appearance of such beings to be a sign of some impending supernatural event.
Monsters, like angels, functioned as messengers and heralds of the extraordinary. They served to announce impending revelation, saying, in effect, "Pay attention; something of profound importance is happening."
}
tell me about Hell's monstrous boy king and what message he brings or what cataclysms are heralded by his arrival!
It had been one demon, at first.
Dean held him in the devil's trap in an abandoned warehouse in town and used every torture method he knew, every method Alastair had taught him while he was in Hell. He asked one question: where was Sam? He got no answer, not a real one anyway. Dean was tempted to just kill him then and there, but suddenly the demon's attitude changed. Dean asked again.
"You don't want to know," the demon said. "You should run while you still can."
Dean refused to run, of course. Nothing would stop him from finding Sam, not even this demon that wanted him to flee while he could. He ended up killing him. He wasn't useful.
Two months later and Dean couldn't find any demons anywhere.
He'd spent six weeks looking, but every demon he came across fled before he could even get close to them. They had been getting scarcer over the course of the two months, and Dean thought they were a lot like birds fleeing before a thunderstorm.
Come to think of it, he hadn't been seeing much of anything lately. The monsters had all disappeared; he hadn't taken a case in weeks and it was making Dean uneasy. It wasn't just the demons fleeing like birds before a storm; it was the monsters, and the spirits too. But he wouldn't stop until he found Sam.
Dean found Sam three weeks later, but it wasn't in the way he wanted.
Sam smiled, stood before him in a velvet black suit which was too clean for the dirty warehouse. Around him, demons were assembled, and they all looked at Dean with something akin to pity as he tried facing down the King of Hell.
"Sam, this isn't you," Dean pleaded, ignoring the soft laughs from the demons nearby. He couldn't ignore, though, how Sam's head tilted a fraction, reminding Dean of a predator sizing up prey and sending fear spiking through him.
"But this is me, Dean. You're just not willing to accept it. You never have been," Sam replied, voice as soft as Dean remembered but still holding an edge of sharpness that hadn't been there before. His eyes weren't Sam's either - they were something distinctly other, even though they were the same kaleidoscope of hazel and green and blue that Dean had seen all his life, achingly familiar and yet so dangerously different.
Sam took a few steps forward, closer to Dean. "I tolerated you for three months, but you wouldn't give up. I warned you, Dean. Like birds fleeing from a thunderstorm. Yet you refused to listen." He shook his head. "I always wondered what would get you killed first - your loyalty or your stubbornness."
Dean couldn't believe this was happening. He still refused to believe that Sam didn't want to be saved, that this was what his brother had become. He shook his head, feeling tears rising, and tried again. "No," he said weakly. "Sam, no. This isn't - this isn't you."
Sam smiled pityingly. "I warned you," he repeated, and the last thing Dean saw was the twist of Sam's wrist, followed by a white-hot pain, before everything went dark.