gavemea_45 | (no subject)

[From here.]

It's still cool this early in the morning, here in Wyoming in late spring. The eastern sky is only beginning to lighten with the brightness of false dawn, but it's enough to see the dark shape of the Impala a few yards away, parked beside the road.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

stilljustandrew

Andrew's breath catches, but only for a moment; he's chanting again even as he grips his cut arm and squeezes firmly, letting the blood drip down into the wire design, gleaming bright red against the brighter metal.

He doesn't move until the little space is filled, and then tugs the length of gauze off his shoulder and wraps it quickly two or three times around the wound. It'll stop the bleeding. Anything else can wait.

(Anything else like the memories pushing their way up into his consciousness: the pentacle, the earth, the blood against silver.)

From:

gavemea_45

Smoke continues to curl softly upward from the burning herbs. For a few moments, nothing else seems to happen.

Cold blue fire sparks upward with a hiss from the center of the pooled blood, drawing on it like fuel. It flares and races outward along lines of silver, setting the structured pattern ablaze with a wildly flickering flame.

The fire streaks along the carefully-laid wire lines to the tomb itself. There it flares again, and flows along the edges of the steel door, limning it in unearthly radiance.

A low thrumming begins to build, more felt than heard at first, rising upward from the ground through the soles of their feet.

From:

stilljustandrew

Yes, he says silently, yes, go --

He'd know the spell was working even if he couldn't see the blue fire; he can feel it, pulling at him through his blood, drawing on his energy, transforming it into force.

The divided pentacle around the keyhole begins to turn, in slow grinding jerks.

From:

gavemea_45

Sam only realizes that he's holding his breath when his vision begins to blossom with large black spots. He rasps in a sudden, large gasp of air and keeps on watching as the brightness around the door continues to increase, flickering tendrils of blue light slowly edging their way down the steel bands that cross the door in the very center, beneath the twisting lock.

The light reaches the mirrored crescents on each crosspiece... and stops advancing.

Hot red sparks begin to spit from the tips of each crescent as blue flame is transmuted to burning gold, a gold that's echoed in the metal of the pentacle lock-- which itself has stopped turning and is beginning to glow.

From:

stilljustandrew

Andrew's eyes are fixed on the pentacle lock. The look of determination is slowly draining away from his face, replaced by --

-- blankness, but not the blankness of shock; it's more as though there's nothing there to animate his face.

The gold light is spreading outward from the lock, pushing back the blue in a slow struggle. In response, the blue flares higher, harsher, growing bright enough to sting the eye.

From:

gavemea_45

The growing cold in the pit of his stomach warns him that his body knows the truth even while his mind is still trying to refuse it.

Something's wrong.

"Andrew?" Sam's tone is sharp, his words clipped. "Andrew, talk to me, what's going on here--"

From:

stilljustandrew

Andrew doesn't respond. Doesn't react to Sam's voice at all. He's starting to shake; again, not as though from cold or fear, but as though gripping a live wire.

That's not too far from the truth.

White and purple sparks sizzle around the edges of the silver, and the little pool of blood is starting to char.

From:

gavemea_45

"Andrew--"

Sam strides forward, coming up beside the circle where he can see his face.

The pentacle flares bright, each golden thorn shining white-hot, and something begins to hiss.

From:

stilljustandrew

His face is horribly blank, and twitching.

The stench of charring blood is rising, sharper and fouler than the burning leaves.

From:

gavemea_45

It's mixed with the sharp smell of heated metal. The steel door is beginning to glow a dull red, and lines of red-gold fire are beginning to appear at the seams between stone, all around the tomb.

Sam moves right up to the edge of the wire structure, looking back and forth from Andrew to the mauseoleum, his face twisted in agonized indecision.

From:

stilljustandrew

The low thrumming underfoot is scaling upward in pitch and speed; the hiss abruptly grows louder as though joined by more sources, and the ground begins to shake. At the cardinal points of the circle, the candles flare up and melt into puddles of wax.

One arm of the thorned pentacle lock slowly sags, followed by another.

From:

gavemea_45

No, no, shit--

"Andrew, snap out of it!" Sam reaches out as though to grab his arm, but is stopped by an invisible wall of force. He whirls to stare in growing horror at the tomb, then back at Andrew, his fists clenched helplessly at his sides.

"Goddammit, Andrew, answer me!"

From:

stilljustandrew

No response. The twitching and shaking is getting worse, as though jolts of electricity are running through him, speeding up --

The last of the blue fire struggles, gutters, and dies. In the space of a blink, the red and gold fire contracts back toward the half-melted pentacle lock, draws itself into a single blinding point, and goes dark.

A deep shivering boom sounds as the shockwave of a broken spell explodes outward, ripples toward the horizon.

Andrew's whole body jerks, convulses, and topples over sideways.

From:

gavemea_45

He's knocked sprawling by the explosion, fetching up hard against a gravestone.

Sam ignores the pain from his bruised ribs and pushes himself up, scrambling across the ground and the now-dark wire circle to reach Andrew's side.

"Andrew? Come on, man, say something--"

From:

stilljustandrew

Andrew's lying on his side, legs still tangled together and drawn up in that frozen crouch, bandaged arm pinned under him. His eyes are open, glazed and staring.

He isn't breathing.

From:

gavemea_45

"No, no no no no no no oh god no--"

It's a nightmare, or at least it feels like one, and as Sam stares at the fallen body for an instant all he can see is the blood everywhere, and Dean's open, empty gaze.

Sam doesn't even realize that he's weeping as he reaches out to take him by the shoulders.

"-- please, please, no, wake up, please wake up--"

From:

stilljustandrew

No movement. No breath.

Nothing.

And then a heaving gasp, sucking in air, and Andrew's feet scrabble uselessly against the ground.

From:

gavemea_45

"It's okay, I gotcha--"

He shifts automatically to provide support and mild restraint together.

"--take it easy--"

From:

stilljustandrew

Another hoarse gasp, and another, the breath wheezing in his throat. He's shivering violently, and the cold of his skin is palpable even through his clothes.

It takes a moment before his gaze focuses on Sam.

"... d-did ... did it --"

He coughs, and blood flecks his lips.

From:

gavemea_45

Silently, he shakes his head.

From:

stilljustandrew

He blinks at Sam -- and then his gaze shifts, looking past Sam to the mausoleum.

And stares in shock.

The entire gate is slagged over: the thorned pentacle of the lock, the steel bindings with their crescent-ornamented crosspieces, the doors themselves, all melted together into a single slab of blistered metal, unrecognizeable.

From:

gavemea_45

Sam doesn't turn to look again. Not yet. He'd seen enough in the first quick glance.

(It'll take months of work to try to even get through the damage, and even if the locking mechanism's intact beneath, he still doesn't have the Colt.

Nor any other way in.)

His gaze drifts aimlessly aside instead, down at the nearest grave.

It's not all that different from Dean's, really. Just another mound of dirt, sealing a body away into the dark.

From:

stilljustandrew

I broke it.

Andrew swallows. There's the taste of blood in his mouth.

No wonder there are tears in Sam's eyes. No wonder Sam isn't looking at him.

(He can't stop shivering.)

From:

gavemea_45

It takes a few moments to notice that the subtle vibration under the supporting hand he's got on the other guy's back isn't out of tension in his own body; Andrew's shuddering.

Sam looks quickly back up at him.

"You okay? Cold?"

Just after dawn on a Wyoming May morning isn't exactly warm, after all.

From:

stilljustandrew

"I --"

Sometime in the past however many minutes, he discovers, he bit the inside of his cheek rather badly. He swallows salt blood, and turns to Sam with a look of frantic pleading in his eyes.

"I can fix it. I -- let me try again, I'll, I can f-find out what I did wrong --"