Dawn – chpt 5
by: sifi.
--
"So girl what the hell was that show about?" Shep asked bolting the door and making sure the salt line was still in tact as she headed for the bathroom.
"Just some old ghosts, I'll be out in a few minutes," closing the door she ran the shower and quickly stripped, finally taking a moment to examine the wounds that hadn't been tended yet, the lowest end of the slice the marauder made went half way down her thigh to finish in a whip-like curl on the outside of the leg. The last part of it that she figured would need stitches was just a little below and outside of the crease.
"Missed it by that much," she sighed knowing that a few centimeters more toward the inside and her femoral might have been compromised. If that'd been the case, she very likely wouldn't be standing here right now. "Small mercies," she sighed stepping into the steaming hot water, letting it wash away the filth on the outside at least.
Wrapped in a towel and carrying another she noticed Shep had stripped the sheets off one of the beds and was ready to do some sewing.
"So, what did you and Tom come up with last night?" she asked arranging herself and the towels on the bed to make the task as easy on the man as possible.
"I irrigated the whole thing as best as possible in the shower so you don't have to worry about that," she nodded as he slid his glasses on and shined the light down on her.
"There's a lot to cover, Tom's a helluva researcher. I'll have you know, little man learned everything he knows from my nephew," he muttered moving down the line, assessing the wound with a long practiced eye.
"Really?"
"Meh, I'm sure daddy-bear played some part, well and maybe some of it's a natural gift, but I lay odds on my boy," Shep smiled.
"How'd you all come to know each other?" she asked with her hands behind her head.
Shep smiled gently, dug out the old 'story-time' voice he used to use when Tommy was a youngster, and began to tell the tale of how he and Tom met the Winchesters. In no time, the woman was fast asleep and breathing lightly while he did his duty.
--
Vibration caught its attention.
As it lay in the earth's embrace its focus scanning slowly in the direction it last felt the energies it hunted, The Chosen and his champion are shielded, it was almost ready to believe all three of them had escaped, until that flavor trembled from many miles away.
Fear. No matter the realm the taste is unmistakable, and fear shall be my weapon. Destroy the emissary, they will be unprotected, and when I find them, I will take their power, and their knowledge will take me to the betrayer.
With the summoning of desire and the direction of focus; corded tendrils reached outward toward the vibration. It slithered toward the taste of vulnerability and an exhausted mind plagued with a need for something called atonement.
--
"You sure you wanna be pushing your limits there young man?" Tom asked looking up as Dean sat up straight and leaned forward, groaning faintly with the depth of the stretch.
"Mmmman that feels good, besides I'm being careful, believe me Tom, the last thing I want is for any of these damned holes to open up," his gaze flicked to his little brother's gentle smile, "How're you holding up Sam?"
The younger hunter nodded, "Tired. Stiff. But okay," he agreed.
"Yeah well you're both still fighting infections, so don't go thinking that just because you have a minute to breathe here, that either of you's ready to get back in the ring just yet," Tom admonished warily, after all he knew these boys.
At the foot of his bed Dean raised both his arms, his right moved far more freely than his left as he swung the casted limb slowly backward and forward, then up and around, searching for his range of motion, "Man this is effed up right here, I feel like I could go nuts if I can't straighten out my arm man," he grunted noting the crunchy feeling in his shoulder and the stretching and pinching along his forearm at the incision sites.
"And why're they gonna cut it off and give me a new one later?" he asked tapping the fiberglass casing, "That just doesn't make sense in my book," he grumbled, now standing at the window, and holding on tightly with his good hand while he bent his knees slowly stretching the grossly damaged muscles at the fronts of his thighs.
Burning trembling held his breath in his chest as he held the stretch at its most painful point yet, "God that hurts," he croaked.
"Breathe through it, you'll be alright," Sam nodded glancing upward from the clean notebook he was working with, trying to make heads and tails out of Shep and Tom's previous night's findings.
Dean gritted his teeth and pushed while his legs quaked threatening to let him spill to the floor, "Tom... stuck," he bit, then sighed relief as the older man shoved a chair behind him and helped him to sit.
"Wow that just sucks out loud," he groaned rubbing the feeling back into his thighs while he cast a worried glance at their friend.
"Don't worry, it just takes time Dean," Tom assured him pushing his glasses back up his nose before pushing the elder Winchester and his chair over to Sam's bed so they could get back to work organizing their information.
"Sucks to be gettin' old dun'n't it?" Sam cracked trying to hold back a smile.
"Beats the alternative. Besides... who you callin' old whippersnapper? At's it, no poptarts for you!" Dean cawed in a cartoon voice then smacked his gums together to pull a chuckle from his limited audience.
"Alright, so where're we at?" he asked turning the Encyclopedia Mythica Volume 2, to face him.
His eyes were drawn immediately to the top inner quarter of the left page where a photo of an ancient Babylonian artifact was imbedded. He frowned while reading the caption then turned his gaze to the likeness of a creature carved from obsidian.
Warmth like penetrating desert heat stole through him as he studied the sight before him.
Layers of time and lives peeled back through the ages as... his gaze moved over each of the creatures' three faces, one more fearsome than the next. Each sinister countenance bore a mouth full of sharply curved serpentine fangs, dripping with pearly venom. Its head was wreathed with thick iron-like feathers, each one ending in a spiny quill that glistened menacingly no matter what light it was viewed in.
Enormous multi-layered wings grew from the creature's back, bands of leather criss-crossed its chest, woven between its three breasts, to culminate in a waist belt and scabbard slung low, barely above the roots of its three erect penises.
A gust of warmth blew his hair back as he circled the monstrosity before him, his eyes roaming up and down, noting each of the three eyes in each of its three faces, 'The guards, the gallas; have left, there is no one here to save you,' he thought as he stood before the creature's central face, its eyes held fast to him, glaring furiously as it snapped its center jaw together, the other two echoing the near-challenge a heart beat later, loosing acidic spittle onto the ochre colored floor.
"You do not belong here child, this world is NOT for you," he said.
The language of the Anunna, the first of the Greater Gods under Enki; rolled from the creature's central mouth, taken up in syncopation by the other two of its faces as it spoke in angry retort.
Dean felt the mouth that was, and yet was not his reply, "God or no, your father made the choice. The crime was his, the punishment is MINE to decide, if you wish to lay blame then seek out your sire, not me or the galla," this wasn't the first time they'd had this conversation.
'My son? My woman?' he wondered fleetingly where they might have gone to spend the day, 'Are they with the lions, I wish I were with them.'
Once more the creature hissed its angry sounds, its powerful form and figure towering over his own and yet he had no fear.
A slight shake of the head made plain his stance, "No. The galla will remain in the underworld for eternity, that is HIS punishment for the part he played. You may NOT have him. There are no rights left in this world for your kind, the deeds of your sire has seen to it Nergal. Be grateful for my mercy, I may easily have chosen death for you and yours instead..." he sighed wearily and turned his back on the creature before him, moving to the balcony that encircled his throne room, giving him view over all his creation.
A thunderous clap of its layered wings brought forth a gust of heat that pushed against his back while segmented talons rose into the air above him as if to strike. A sad smile raised the corners of his mouth as he turned, his finger touched the creature's breast bone, and a susurration from his lips bent the beast in half, wringing it tightly upon itself, drawing it into a world it didn't want, driving it from the one it did.
It screamed in agony and swore its vengeance as the stone around it began to shudder and crumble.
"The crime was against me and mine, the price to pay is MINE to determine, not yours nephew," he sighed as the enraged youth was sealed beyond the first Gods' realm, but not without a final warning spoken into his ear. 'You will try,' Enki thought sadly, '...and mine will be ready when you do.'
A broad smile stretched his lips as curious eyes peered around the corner, watching the floor and walls return to their pristine state.
The boy's finger traced the luminous blue-white words inscribed on one of the walls; those words that matched the ones his father spoke. A glimpse at his King brought an awe-filled grin before young legs carried the child across the warm stone and into his father's waiting embrace.
"Father! Father! Guess what?" the boy asked leaping into his arms.
"What?" he asked lightly while pressing his mouth to his son's temple.
"I got my sight!" the boy grinned leaning back, and with a blink showed his father this newest of his gifts.
Another floe of warm desert wind fanned the flames of love in his heart as he felt himself grin and fill with joy, his arms closed snug, holding his boy to his breast, feeling their hearts beat together he'd never been more content. "That's my boy," he sighed turning once more toward the balcony.
--
"...that's right Dean, just take a breath now, come on, in and out, there you go," Tom's own breath shuddered in his throat while beside him Sam ran a shaky hand down his sweat streaked face, and on the cold floor Dean's back arched as he gasped, ripping air from the room into his lungs with his first real breath in over a full minute.
"Dean?" Sam asked, his voice barely above a whisper, his hand behind his brothers' head, "C'mon now look at me," he directed watching the older man's eyes roll through the room, lighting on objects, and finally on his and Tom's faces respectively.
"What the hell?" he felt his mouth move and heard sound come out but it wasn't a sound he'd made. His heart beat strong and fast in his chest, his throat closed for a moment as a flash of red and orange tumbled across his mind, caught up in a desert wind, "Wait! wait!" he knew he spoke the words. 'Oh man, this just sucks, I had a stroke, I threw a clot, I'm gonna freakin die, I can't talk, there's some nasty little blood clot in my brain just waiting to shut me down... never shoulda lived this long anyway. Why can't I say... strobing flashes of reds, oranges, and blue-white cube-ish designs on tiles spun in his mind's eye, and he knew. His eyes slammed shut, his hand pressing over them, hoping to keep the moment inside his head just long enough.
"Ne...it was banished, it warned me it would be back... my duties... a contract... I had no choice... the price was known," he breathed in a voice that was his, and still more than his own; and in a language heard only by three other men, in nearly 9 millennia. Two of those men were dead, and the third was gaping at him, fighting icy shivers up his spine.
"Get him up Tom, sit him up..." Sam instructed feeling his skin crawl as he snagged the paper and pen off the bed. He laid the notebook into his brothers' lap, and pressed the pen into his right hand then crouched at Dean's side shaking and sweating more now than before. He'd heard that language once before, and though he didn't remember much of the experience, what he DID remember was a fear of being lost to his brother. That was when he tried to... well not him, that... what'd he call him? Something –ki, ... not Enki, that's the first one... Anna... Oooh! Anunnaki! Son of a bitch tried to get Dean to kill me! Bastard!
"God, ohgodohgodohgod... please, please Dean, please..." he breathed when the elder hunter's eyes came open, fixed on the pen, then slid to the pad of paper.
They watched him see as if for the first time the cast on his arm, which to their surprise was quickly shrugged off before his attention turned to the notebook. He drew a line and flipped a page, then grinned and turned it back
Pen touched paper and as line after line was filled with, honestly, from what Sam and Tom could see, MORE lines; John's oldest son spoke a language no human has ever known.
"What the hell's goin' on Sammy?" Tom asked softly, watching Dean's hand seem to fly down the paper, "And you wanna tell me since when does your brother, of all folks," he cocked his head to the side before shooting the younger hunter an impressed half frown, "...know how to write Cuneiform?"
Sam met the older man's eyes, "I recognize it, Dean might even recognize it Tom, but there's no way in hell either of us could write it. I mean it's THE first written language, I'm not sure but I don't think it can be spoken right?" Sam asked motioning to Deans halting self-chatter.
"Pretty sure..." Tom nodded after a moment's thought.
Sam's eyes flicked to the door and he blanched, "Oh hell," he grasped Dean by the head so they were eye to eye, "Dean? Do you understand me?"
Dean nodded, his eyes flashing just a hint of fear he knew his little brother would pick up as he rattled off in an extinct language.
"Shhhhutit!" Sam slapped his hand over Dean's mouth, "Don't talk until you can talk English again," he admonished then noting the puzzled look on his big brother's face explained, "If the... if IT is sensitive to the vibration of its name, it might also be sensitive to..."
Getting the point Dean nodded and removed his little brother's hand from his mouth then continued to document as much of the encounter that he could remember.
"A language that might be as ancient as it is," Tom finished, "So what language you figure he's talkin' little man?"
Sam shook his head just before a shiver shook his whole body, "I don't know."
--
Air shimmered and the questing tendril hovered within the ground, an almost magnetic force called to that bit of consciousness while the rest of the marauder dreamed of its exile. It had sworn vengeance in the name of its father, it swore an oath to see the betrayer brought to justice, the galla who betrayed its father, who betrayed all of their kind had escaped his fate for far too long already.
It stood before the king of the gods, a being in the form of its favored human kind, tiny in comparison to his own terrifying shape and yet it could barely draw breath in the king's presence. "Give me the betrayer, give me the galla who spoke against my father," it asked.
A slight shake of the head made his uncle's stance a certainty. "No. The galla will remain in the underworld for eternity, that is HIS punishment for the part he played. You may NOT have him. There are no rights left in this world for your kind, your sire has seen to it Nergal. Be grateful for my mercy, I may easily have chosen death for you and yours instead..."
As the God turned his back, fury coursed through every fiber of its being. With a leap and a flap of its wings it crossed the throne room, a taloned hand raised high in the air.
The God turned speaking ancient words of power that wanted to drive it to its knees. Those words coursed through the air, breeching the barrier between worlds. The finger of the first deity reached forward and touched its chest. Enki's skin was warm but solid and certain as he marked the youth for the taking.
Fiery agony twisted the fledgling god as it was drawn through a pinhole breech, cast into exile for all the days of earth and man.
"I will return for my fathers' justice! Make no mistake!" it screamed in its agony as around it stone began to shudder and crumble.
"The crime was against me and mine, the price to pay is MINE to determine, not yours nephew," Enki sighed.
"I and my kind will return, and we will tear this world asunder with our righteous quest!" it vowed before the breech was sealed and the first God's realm was made beyond its reach.
--
tbc.
please R&R.
Thanks.
sifi.