Author's Notes: I lied. Sammy will be making a brief appearance in this story.

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Caleb heard Jim shout, "Dean!"

With an explosion of light the rings on the floor flared. Caleb could only compare it to standing and getting battered at ground zero. It was like being blasted by a searing, hot wind as it blew through the chamber. This energy had a presence to it. Caleb could sense it. This power had a hot spark, like the rush of a hunt in your blood.

The silver ring around his finger started to glow and hum in unison with the rings on the floor. Dean was standing in the center of the brightest glowing blue ring. He had a strange blank expression on his face, as the silver disc on his finger glowed like a supernova.

"Deuce!" Caleb yelled as he ran toward his friend.

Then suddenly it was over.

Dean collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Caleb barely managed to catch his friend before he hit the floor. "Deuce?" He called softly as he eased his friend's body to the floor. To Caleb's horror Dean wasn't breathing and his skin was cold as ice.

Jim was rapidly at their side, "Dean?" He grabbed either side of Dean's face gently, "Come on, Son, come back to us."

"You hear him, Deuce?" Caleb barked in his best John Winchester voice as he and Jim rolled Dean in to position to start CPR, "Don't you dare piss me off by checking out on me. No way am I letting you have the last word on anything. You hear me? You bail on me now, and when I finally catch up with you in hell, you'll only wish you were dead."

"Caleb!" Mujib called, "Dean is riding the Muninn. Without a complete triad you must break the connection or it will kill him."

"How?" Caleb asked.

"You're the Knight," Mujib stated, "Reach out and try to pull him back from the void."

Caleb didn't need to be told twice.

He reached out with his mind and forced his way into Dean's mind. He felt their shared connection snap into place and he felt Dean respond, like a dim, distant star. Everything else swirling around him was chaotic, tangled impressions, impossible to comprehend. Dean was drifting, lost, in a dark, icy, void.

Caleb recklessly lunged deeper into the dark and latched onto Dean. He knew the connection wasn't going to last. It was like trying to hold someone afloat in a storm-tossed, sea. The force of the storm was dragging them both under. If he didn't do something fast, Dean was going to be lost to them.

Abruptly Caleb felt another presence helping him surface through the darkness. He would recognize that calm, steady being anywhere. Jim, he thought. Somehow the pastor had reached out to him and wrapped his essence around him and Dean like a lifeline. Caleb then sensed as Jim summoned someone. Whatever the pastor was doing, it was similar to no telepathic link that Caleb had ever felt before.

Another mind rolled in akin to a warm, commanding tidal wave.

Caleb recognized it anywhere.

Dad!

Mackland Ames's brain seemed to assess the situation with a computer-like quickness. Caleb sensed as that powerful mind, reached out and grabbed another psyche. Mac effectively shattering any merger resistance given like a hammer to porcelain. The darkness receded a little as soon as his father threw him in contact with that new mind.

Sammy.

Their triad snapped in to place.

It resembled a live electrical circuit coming to life. Sammy's warm strength anchored and steadied them. Power roared in and fought the darkness back similar to the sunrise chasing away the night. Caleb firmly wrapped his mind around Dean's and with all his remaining strength yanked them both back towards the direction of the light.

He came back to the real world with a grasp, his back arching in his body's attempt to pull in more air. A pair of concerned blue-gray eyes looked down into his. "Caleb's awake," Jim announced relief evident in his voice.

"Dean is breathing again," Mujib's replied.

Hearing that Caleb let the soft, grey unconsciousness that beckoned, float him away.

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Caleb was lying on something soft.

It felt wonderful.

He opened his eyes to a pounding headache and the flickering light of candles.It took him a few moments to put together he was lying on a bed. The rather large blur across the room was Jim. The pastor was sitting in a chair next to Dean's bed. He looked haggard and exhausted.

Jim must have detected he was awake because he asked very gently, "How are you feeling?"

Hollow.

Disconnected.

Confused.

It took all the energy Caleb had to whisper, "Better. Deuce?"

"Dean's not awake yet," Jim replied quietly, "But he's finally coming out of shock."

Caleb gathered his reserves one more time, licked his lips and asked, "Where?"

"You're both safe. Go to sleep Caleb," the Guardian ordered softly.

Too exhausted to fight the command, Caleb closed his eyes and obeyed.

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The Muninn was a thing of myth.

That's what Dr. Mujib Raji had always thought.

At least until he had witnessed Dean Winchester unwittingly tap in to it.

The Muninn by legend was the collective memory of the ancient Brotherhood. It by myth was how knowledge had been passed from one generation of hunters to the next before journals were kept. Named for Odin's raven "Memory" and forged together by the silver bands all members of Brotherhood wore. It was a product of a darker time where literacy was a rare skill, journal keeping had been essentially nonexistent and the position of Scholar had been looked upon with near divine relevance.

No Guardian in recent memory had attempted to travel the Muninn. He knew that. It was a risky thing for both the Guardian and the Knight to even attempt and doing so was no longer needed. Riding the Muninn forced the Guardian to wade though the very veil of death itself and some of them in the past had not returned.

What Dean did today should have been impossible.

Mujib needed to make a phone call.