Another chapter, posted earlier this time. Thank you for still sticking with this. I think it's one of my most convoluted stories, but it's fun to work on. I hope you'll enjoy the next chapter. Some creepiness up ahead, though.

Chapter 16

It had finally met its brother – who had taken the shape of a snake. That was surprising, as its brother had preferred the fox form – all three of them had. But it realized that its brother's thoughts were negative on that now. It had been imprisoned in the fox form, after all. It needed to be something else now. Something stronger.

The warehouse stood in front of them – and they were there. Two of the enemies anyway. It had no idea where the other two were. But now the two inside were vulnerable. Now would have been the perfect time for an attack.

The warehouse was warded, though. They both reacted in fury, slamming themselves against the walls. They had to find a way beyond the wards. They had to get to their enemies.

One is a guardian, the snake demon said. He should die first. Otherwise, he could kill us both.

But not before they found the third box. They needed the third box to finish the job. After all, their sister slumbered in the third box – the most powerful of them all. The one that could cause the death of the entire world – that could swallow heaven and hell in one gulp. And then, it would be only the three of them and a wasteland where only they could live.

xxxXXXxxx

Dean's first plan was to look for something with which to break the door. Nothing in the room fit the criteria. In fact, the damp dark room was mostly empty. Like a prison cell. Dean hated that thought. Hell had been damp and dark too from time to time. Especially when Alistair had been trying to make a point, and he'd stick Dean in an empty room and leave him there for days – maybe months, time had zero meaning over there, it just stretched, on and on and on. He didn't do anything to Dean then, and some might have said that was a relief, a reprieve from the constant torture. But the isolation and the sounds from outside – the screams and the jeering laughter and other noises Dean had not even wanted to figure out the cause of – they all served to drive him insane.

Dean knew Sam hated to be locked in small rooms – an aftereffect of the Cage. He had never told Sam that he hated it just as much and for similar reasons. He had not wanted to share his experiences of Hell first, convinced – and rightly so – that Sam would lack the tools to fully understand. And after Sam had gone there himself and gained those tools –well, Hell was behind Dean, then, the greater torment of believing his brother dead for a year had shown him Alistair had not even been that creative when it had come to causing real pain, and Dean wanted the focus to be on Sam and not on him. So Sam had never found out about Dean's little phobia.

When he realized he could not make his way out of there by force, Dean tried to search for a key. But Gwydion would have never made things so easy for him. He heard Blair cry out again and ran to the door.

"Sandburg?" he shouted.

No answer. He doubted Gwydion was actually torturing Blair himself, but there were plenty of ways of causing pain.

"Hey, I'm coming," he shouted. "Just hang on a little longer, ok? I'll be there in a bit."

Right, a voice mocked in his head. And now tell him there's a Santa Claus too, while you're at it.

Dean hated his cynicism sometimes.

He set out to inspect the door. It looked solid. But maybe the way out was not through the door at all. After all, Gwydion wanted this game as challenging as possible.

"Could there be a secret opening in here?" Dean mused. "Man, this sounds like a B-list horror movie."

He wondered idly if Gwydion knew Dean actually liked B-list horror movies and was trying to ruin them for him. That sounded like the kind of pettiness Gwydion would be capable of.

Dean knocked against the walls but found nothing. Blair had fallen silent. Dean wished he could have thought this was a good thing – but silence could mean a lot of bad things. Maybe Bair was dead – or too deep in whatever hell Gwydion had cast him in to scream anymore.

Finally, Dean was once more standing in front of the door. He tried the handle again, but of course it would not open. Right. Why had he done that anyway? It was not as if he was imagining being locked in.

"What if I am, though?"

The thought came almost against his will, but now that it had latched onto him, Dean could not let it go. After all, Gwydion was a trickster. And Dean already knew tricksters could manipulate reality. He'd seen it firsthand, after all.

"So," he said, "Maybe none of this is real. Not me being locked in here and not whatever is happening to Sandburg."

It was real to Sandburg, though, and Dean would deal with that when he got out. Because now he knew that he could get out. He could leave anytime he wanted.

"This isn't real, Gwydion!" he shouted. "I know your game now. And I'm gonna beat you at this thing."

He waited for something to happen but nothing did. Dean was still alone in the darkness of the dungeon. Doubt began to creep inside his mind. What if he was wrong? What if this was not the answer at all?

But what if it was?

During that time with the original Trickster/Gabriel, the illusion was broken once he and Sam had voiced out loud the discovery that it was all a trick. So, what was Dean supposed to do now to convince Gwydion that he did not think he was locked in a cell? How did he get out?

"But you cannot get out if you're not locked in," he thought.

Maybe he had his answer. Dean looked around him and nodded.

"Alright, Gwydion, you've had your fun. But this time it's my turn. See, I know I'm not in a cell. I probably haven't even left your treasure trove, have I? I haven't been separated from Blair, and whatever Blair seems to think you're doing to him – that's not happening, either."

This, Dean suspected, he would be the one having to convince Sandburg of. But first he had to show that he himself was convinced none of this was real. He took several steps until he was close to the door. Then, he closed his eyes and took another step. If the door was really there, he would smack into it. Only, he reminded himself, there was no door.

Dean encountered no resistance and took another step just because he knew for sure he could. He opened his eyes and was not surprised to find himself back in Gwydion's cozy room. His sense of euphoria brought about by the victory was short lived though, when he spotted Sandburg on the floor, writhing, and screaming his head off. Gwydion was watching on, impassively – as if he was observing some science experiment.

xxxXXXxxx

Blair had experienced some pretty tough things in his life: he had been kidnapped more than once, drugged more than once, shot (only once, luckily, although he had been shot at several times), had drowned (again, luckily just once), and had witnessed the entire world turn against him because of one well-meaning but boundary-breaking act from him mother. That was to say nothing of him being nearly strangled by his best friend who was under the possession of a Chilean spirit or being dogged (ha, he thought inanely, what a pun!) by Cerberus himself.

The thing with the spiders wasn't even new. In his early years with Jim, when he was only an observer, he and a student had fallen in the hands of some evil money-grubbing forgers who happened to also own a state of the art science facility where they had been experimenting with deadly spiders (no, this was not the plot to Spider-man, however close the similarities, Blair had seen how people died when they had been bitten by those things).

He'd had plenty of nightmares over the years about that moment when the spiders had started crawling all over him and his protégé. He had kept his head then, of course, because he had a kid to look after (seriously, those parents who decided to send kids earlier than necessary to college needed to be told that just because the kid was intellectually capable of handling that, did not mean they were emotionally capable, also, Blair would know). They had been close to the sprinkling triggering system and Blair had pushed his chair backwards (broken back had sounded better at the time than death by spider venom). The water had washed the spiders away, fortunately.

Later, Blair had confessed to Jim in one of their impromptu post-nightmare therapy sessions that he had been fully aware of how wrong his plan had gone.

"They could have gotten angry, man," he'd said. "Or frightened. Animals get aggressive and attack when they're frightened. They could have bitten me and Alec on instinct."

"You took a risk, Chief," Jim had said with his usual brand of understanding (Jim was awesome at understanding others, despite being incapable of cutting himself some slack when he was the one making mistakes). "You kept your head and came up with a solution. What more can be asked of you?"

The fact that he'd made Jim proud had sustained Blair for a very long time and through some very bad days. Well, Jim would probably be disappointed now, because he was definitely not keeping his head and not looking for a solution. Instead, he was on the floor, offering a demon the show of a lifetime, while he was writhing and shouting and trying to get those damned things off him.

They were everywhere: on his clothes and on his skins. Quite a few had gotten in his hair (Alright, guys, you win, he'd say to Jim's colleagues at the police station, I'm finally cutting my hair. In fact, I'm shaving the entire thing. You don't want to know what's been in there). He was sure some had gotten into his mouth and ears and the thought made him sick. He gagged, but knew that if he got sick now lying on his back like this, he'd probably aspirate and die before the spiders got their chance to kill him.

They had already bitten him. He was certain of this. He had felt the stings of pain on his arms and legs, on his chest too, he thought, but he could not be sure, that might have been him about to go into heart failure from the panic. He could feel something wrong with his body, the temperature rising, the oxygen diminishing, pain and nausea and a lot of unpleasant sensations that were overwhelming him.

This is it, he thought, an edge of hysteria in his mind, this is how I'm going to die. The fountain didn't kill me, but those spiders will. Then he nearly laughed: Man, Jim's going to kill me if I die like this.

He thought he heard Dean's voice in the distance. He had broken through, then. But if he was there, why wasn't he getting the spiders off him? Why was he allowing Blair to go through this torment now that he had the means to save him?

Blair tried to focus on Dean's voice. It was hard through the haze and through his own screaming, but he finally stopped enough to listen to the words:

"…listen to me," Dean was saying. "Sandburg, just listen, alright? Focus on me. It's not real. Whatever you think is happening, it's not real."

At first, the words did not make any sense. Then, Blair started to get the gist of it. Not real? he thought hysterically. That's what you think! They're all over me. you can't tell me I'm not feeling them crawling everywhere.

Blair was sure the spiders increased their attack at that point – and was it just him, or had they actually gotten bigger? He tried to resume his struggling when he felt someone pin him down and grab his arms.

"Sandburg, listen to me," Dean shouted close to his ear. "There is nothing wrong with you."

Well, nothing that an overdose of antivenin and a place where no spider had gone before would fix, Blair thought wryly.

Blair shook his head, as if to deny Dean's words.

"No," he gasped, "No, you've got to see them. They're…they're crawling all over me…"

Dean's hold on him tightened.

"Nothing is crawling on you. This is what Gwydion wants you to think. But I swear, there's nothing here."

He sounded so sure, Blair almost wanted to believe him.

"Gwydion is a trickster, Blair," Dean went on. "That means he manipulates reality. He makes you see what he wants you to see."

"Feels pretty real to me," Blair said through clenched teeth.

Just then, he felt a particularly vicious bite on his face. He groaned.

"No, no, listen to me," Dean said and he sounded desperately urgent. "You're not going to give in to that kind of tricks, are you? You're a shaman."

What's that got to do with anything? Blair thought morosely.

"If I could fight his tricks, then so can you," Dean went on. "Just focus on whatever hippie mumbo-jumbo you usually do and convince yourself that this is isn't real."

Dean was apparently channeling Jim quite a lot. But it was working. Blair stilled his struggles, even though he could still feel the spiders crawling over him.

"It's…it's not real?" he asked, and he hated how small and desperate his voice sounded.

Dean's hands tightened around his arms in encouragement.

"That's right, Sandburg. It's not. Now you just have to try to convince yourself that it's not."

Then did that mean that the crawling, the bites, the pain, was it an illusion? Because it felt like anything but. Blair still felt like he was dying.

"I…I'm not…" he began, swallowing harshly.

"Sandburg, you're the only one who can convince yourself this isn't real. I can't do it for you. But I know a fighter when I see one, and you're definitely one, so fight this."

Blair took a deep breath. It's not real, he told himself. It's not real. There were no spiders, it was all in his head. But what if Dean was the figment of imagination and the spiders were actually real? For a moment, his concentration faltered and he could barely feel Dean's grip anymore. He could hear his voice though, from far away:

"Sandburg, don't you dare do this to me. Now come on. Fight this."

It's not real, Blair told himself. It's not real. He was repeating it out loud now, a mantra that was supposed to pull him away from the hell Gwydion had dragged him to. It's not real. None of this was real.

The stings caused by the spider bites were fading. The sick sensation of having something crawling all over him, even inside him had now gone into the background. He could not tell whether there were spiders on him anymore.

Blair finally opened his eyes to find himself in the room where Gwydion had given Dean the poisoned drinks. Dean was holding him down looking concerned.

"I think you can let go now," Blair said.

His voice was a wreck. The spiders might not have been real, but him screaming his head off was. He felt a flush of embarrassment.

Dean hesitated for an instant, then let him go and drew slightly back. Blair took a deep breath.

"Hey," he croaked.

Dean huffed.

"Hey," he said, sounding slightly unnerved. "Welcome back."

xxxXXXxxx

Dean was glad when he finally got Blair to respond to him. Gwydion had kept well out of it, had only said that he was curious to see if Dean could bring Sandburg out of it before he suffered an aneurism – which would not have meant him killing Sandburg, it would have simply meant Sandburg succumbing to something that was not there. At any other time, Dean would have shoved that distinction down Gwydion's throat (or maybe told Gwydion to shove it himself somewhere even less pleasant). He had been too focused on keeping Sandburg away from the demons in his mind to try.

Blair seemed fine now. A little embarrassed, which was not surprising. Dean could tell him that he knew about the demons of the mind just as much as he knew about the real ones. In fact, Dean often preferred the real ones. They could be defeated much quicker. But he suspected Blair would take such comments from him as an attempt to patronize, so he decided to drop it and leave the debriefing to Ellison.

"You OK?" Dean asked. "Crisis over?"

Blair nodded quickly and sat up shakily. He swallowed harshly and grimaced.

"Man, my throat is killing me."

He sounded like he had swallowed several bags of glass. Dean could not blame him. He knew what several bouts of screaming could do to someone. He moved his mind away from that thought, because he had already been reminded of Hell once today. He did not need to make a habit out of it.

"Yeah, well, once we have that box, you can celebrate with that mosquito piss you call tea."

Gwydion cleared his throat then. Dean glared at him.

"Peep show's over, as you can see," he said harshly. "Now that you're done being a pervert, can we get on with the third task?"

Gwydion did not look too offended by Dean's insults. In fact, he acted as if Dean was a Chihuahua that was good at yapping threats, but not good enough to act out on them.

"Are you sure this is what you want?"

Dean frowned.

"What the hell are you on about? After what we've just been through, of course I want the freaking box. Why wouldn't I?"

Gwydion smiled tightly.

"Because, one might say, these two were the easy levels. Now we're raising the difficulty."

Dean sensed the threat in the words but decided not to bow down to it.

"So, what are you saying?" Blair asked. "That we should quit while we're ahead?"

Gwydion shrugged.

"I suppose that is what I am saying, yes."

Dean's sense of something wrong immediately activated.

"Why?" he challenged.

"Out of the goodness of my heart, I suppose," Gwydion said carelessly.

Dean snorted.

"You're a demon. You were just getting off on someone's pain no less than a quarter of an hour ago. So give me another one."

Gwydion frowned.

"These are the rules," he said. "I'm supposed to offer you an out. If you do not want to take it…"

"We really don't," Dean said firmly.

Gwydion sighed.

"Suit yourselves," he muttered. "And I suppose Mr. Sandburg still wants to step in if something happens to the main player?"

Blair took a step forward.

"Why wouldn't I?" he challenged.

Dean could detect the tenseness in Blair's tone. He could guess that Blair was bothered by his little display and did not want to appear a coward. Still, antagonizing Gwydion was not the way.

He put a hand on Blair's shoulder, restraining him.

"Let's not go overboard here, shall we?"

Sandburg frowned but did not shrug him off. Instead, he turned to glare at Gwydion.

"Nothing has changed for me," he said. "Except, I used to be fascinated by you. Now I'm just disgusted."

Dean closed his eyes. Keeping Sandburg alive was apparently a full-time occupation.

Fortunately, Gwydion did not seem offended by Blair's oversharing.

"Fair enough," he said. "I told you, when you've lived as long as I have, you begin to see things differently."

Dean scoffed.

"How about you get on with it?"

Gwydion's eyes glittered, and it almost made Dean back off. Almost, but not quite.

"Yeas," he said. "Let's get on with it, shall we?"

Then the world went dark.

xxxXXXXxxxx

The bangs on the door would not stop. They were trapped. It did not matter that they were essentially safe inside. If they could not get out, they were still trapped.

Sam could sense Jim was getting tense and ready to do something rash. They had to figure a way out quickly. Anger was an emotion the demons could exploit. And while they could not touch him because of the Trials, who knew what they could do to Jim?

"Alright," he said. "We just need to keep our heads, now."

"I'm open to suggestions," Jim said tersely. "There's a whole lot of stuff in here. Couldn't you use some of that against the demon?"

Sam bit his lips. He would need to know what he was looking at first.

"You've already seen what happens if you touch stuff at random in here. I don't want a repeat of that."

"Well, then what about the boxes themselves? If we need to lock the demons in the boxes, why not do it now? Why wait for the third box?"

Jim was thinking like a civilian. He still had a lot to learn about how the supernatural worked.

"We could try," Sam admitted. "But we might risk losing the boxes. We need all three of them together for this to work."

He also suspected they needed both Jim and Sandburg if they wanted to make sure the demons were locked permanently. Otherwise, Henry wouldn't have been so insistent to have Arthur Ellison perform the ritual that tied Aaron Sandburg's descendants to his. He said nothing about that, though. Ellison was already upset about Blair not being there and saw it somehow as Sam's fault.

Jim sighed and shook his head.

"Ok, so we cannot use the boxes and we cannot use anything that's here. Can't you perform some…uhh..exorcism? after all that's what they usually do to demons in horror movies, right?"

If only you knew, Sam thought bitterly.

"They do," he agreed. "But these demons don't possess the bodies they have. They can shapeshift. I can't cast them out of their bodies because there's nothing to cast out. They are the bodies."

Jim looked confused and Sam could not blame him. he had not dealt with such creatures before. Regular demons were better in many ways. At least Sam had weapons against them – and a way to make sure they would never bother anyone again if he finished the Trials.

"So there's absolutely nothing we can do?" Jim asked skeptically.

He looked about to get outside himself and challenge the demons with only his gun.

"There might be something," Sam finally said. "But you're not gonna like it. And probably Blair won't either."

Jim's jaw tightened.

"Lay it on me."

Sam sighed heavily.

"We erase the wards."

Jim looked at him as if he had grown an extra head.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, Winchester, but aren't those wards what's keeping those things from entering here?"

Sam nodded.

"Yeah. We erase the wards, we let them come in."

Jim shook his head.

"Alright, I know you're not really fond of life right now, but I never thought you'd be downright suicidal, and I as sure as hell didn't think you'd take someone else along for the ride. What is wrong with you?"

Sam took a deep breath, trying to contain his impatience.

"Listen, if we're quick, we can get out before they do any damage."

Jim did not look convinced.

"And then what? We can't keep them contained in the warehouse, only the boxes can do that. We can't use the boxes until we have the whole set. So what do we do? They get in, we get out. What's to stop them from following us right back outside?"

And here came the part that Ellison really wouldn't like.

"We buy ourselves some time," Sam said.

Jim frowned, suspicious. Sam could not blame him considering what he was going to suggest.

"We set fire to the warehouse."

Jim gaped at him.

"Excuse me?"

"We set the warehouse on fire. That's not gonna kill them, but it's gonna slow them down enough for us to be able to leave and go back to the Bunker."

"Where we'll lock ourselves in a warded place and then find ourselves in the same predicament we are now," Jim argued. "And then what? Do we set fire to your Bunker as well?"

Sam felt a twinge of indignation at the prospect.

"Of course not. That's our…well, our base."

He had nearly said "our home", but he was not used to the concept, and each time he had actively tried to have a home, things have gone wrong for him, so why jinx the Bunker as well?

"Look, by the time we get there, we might have a handle on the third box."

Jim was pacing the warehouse now, looking like a caged panther.

"And then what?"

Sam was glad that Jim had not reminded him they did not even know what Dean and Blair were doing right now, so it was too much for them to hope they would be getting the third box so soon. Still, the abrupt question took him by surprise.

"Our mission is to lock up all three demons," Jim said. "My mission, at least. Apparently. So you say."

"So my grandfather said," Sam corrected. "And yours."

Jim nodded tersely.

"Right. They did. How? Did they also mention what I was supposed to do?"

Sam grimaced.

"I haven't gotten round to that part yet."

He wasn't doing too much for his credibility, Sam guessed. Still, Jim was starting to look more resigned than annoyed.

"If we set the warehouse on fire, what's gonna happen to everything that's here? Won't you set something loose?"

Sam shook his head.

"Fire usually purifies, so no. It won't release anything that's already on lockdown. It might even diminish the demons' powers – temporarily."

Jim was starting to look interested.

"How temporary?" he asked.

"Enough for us to have time to get back – even tow the Impala on the way."

"And the fire department? If they put out the fire and they discover what's in here?"

Sam shrugged. He did not want to draw attention to their activities so close to home, but he was actually surprised it had not happened sooner.

"We can make it look as if it was vandals or faulty wiring or something. And since there aren't any deeds yet that show either Dean and me or Sandburg as they owners of the warehouse, hopefully it won't be traced back to us."

Jim finally nodded.

"Fine. You're the expert."

It was a strange thing for someone like Jim to give control to others. Sam supposed the incident with the holy water might have been an eye opener for him.

"Let's get to work, then," he said.

From outside the demons kept banging against the warehouse.

I could not help sneaking in a few stuff about Dean's time in Hell, the later seasons of SPN rarely touched upon that, but I like sifting through the boys' minds and bringing all the dark stuff to light. I'll bring even more dark angsty stuff in the next chapter, but that's for next week (I made you curious, didn't I :P)