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The first thing Dean noticed when he woke up was that he couldn’t move. It was a weird feeling, since he could very well still feel everything around him. He could feel the rough floor beneath him, small rocks digging into his back through the shirt he was wearing. He could feel the fabric of his clothes against his skin and the tickle of stray hairs against his forehead, and he could most definitely feel that there was nothing keeping him locked in place, but he couldn’t move.
He put all of his willpower into his limbs, and had they been mobile, he probably would have flung himself halfway across the room. They didn’t move an inch, but internally, panic started to flow through him. Have you ever been on the verge of a panic attack but been physically unable to hyperventilate? It’s like a cycle where you know what you should be feeling and what should be happening, but the fact that nothing will do what it’s supposed to only makes the panic that much worse.
Remaining spread-eagled on the floor, his eyes moved erratically around his field of vision in an attempt to ground himself and piece together what the hell was happening, and a few things stood out to him. First, that it was dark. He could barely make out the low-hanging ceiling, not to mention whatever walls he assumed to be, well, somewhere, because if there’s a ceiling, then there have to be walls. The only thing he could see to each side of him, though, was a seemingly impenetrable darkness.
That actually wasn’t completely true; around him, in what looked to be a ring, were about half a dozen candles. It was hard to tell, since he couldn’t move his head, but if he squinted, Dean could possibly make out something dark drawn onto the floor. It looked like paint, and though the dim light made it hard to discern anything, it looked to be a very worrying red. The way the candles were set upon the dark circle, as well as the lines that passed under him, made it feel as though he was doused with ice. He was quite literally in the middle of some sort of demonic circle.
His fears were only intensified when, from the darkness, stepped five men in long, black robes, who moved to surround the circle of candles evenly. His immediate thought at the sight was, ‘How cliché.’ His second thought was, ‘Well, fuck.’
Dean hoped with all of his heart that, despite the fear-inducing situation and set-up, they were just amatures hoping to dabble in satanism and black magic without any real knowledge or ability. Still, he couldn’t help but feel the hairs on his arms stand on end as he looked up to the flowing black robes and the deep hoods that concealed the faces of those around him with shadow. There was nothing remarkable to point out; no symbols, or erratic movements, or even a person who looked to be in charge, and when the one at the end of his right arm spoke up, he barely heard it, as it was little more than a whisper.
“He has awoken. Diabolus, administer it once more.” The voice was low and smooth, calm, which Dean found extremely ironic given his continuous internal panic.
He hadn’t even had time to wonder what ‘it’ was when the person at his left arm, Diabolus apparently, kneeled down and, with deft movements, administered something into his neck. Drugs; sure, why not. At least he now knew why he couldn’t move, but he wasn’t sure if the explanation and that it wasn’t some supernatural power made him more or less concerned, and maybe it was just his mind, but his limbs already felt heavier than before.
The person, with a voice that was so quiet Dean had to strain to make out what was being said, murmured into his ear. “No one’s coming.” The hunter was sure that his eyes must have taken on a crazed look, filled with panic that clouded over his sight and sent blood rushing through his ears.
The person Diabolus returned to their original position, and for a second, everything was silent. Then, the person that stood at Dean’s head spoke up, their voice more gravelly, more powerful than the last one had been.
“Let us begin,” they said, and without hesitation, the others started singing. It started out as just a low humming to some inaudible melody, so low that any shift in pitch was practically impossible to make out. From there, though, it grew louder, and soon the humming had progressed to a wordless singing, like some sort of perverted church chorus. It was unsettling, the voices falling from their mouths and blanketing the small pocket of light with something heavy, something that seeped through Dean’s clothes and skin and straight into his bones.
Next, words were added to the song, if it could even be called that with how utterly warped and wrong it sounded. They overlapped, each person speaking something completely different from those around them. Not even the language was consistent, and Dean would freely admit that Sam was more the expert in that field. One Latin phrase stood out to him, though; ‘Te invoco a profundus inferni.’ From the deepest hell I summon thee. This wasn’t a few sickos playing make-believe, this was real, and this was dangerous.
The music swelled and crashed back down, like waves upon the shore during a storm, and suddenly, joining the cacophony of noise, was something new. It was a surreal sound, the kind that penetrated your mind and reduced it to its primal thoughts and emotions. Impossible to describe as it was, the closest description that one would be able to give it would go something like this: it started out as a low, vibrating humm, barely able to be registered as noise but able to be felt deep within nonetheless. Then a grating, high-pitched tone was added, like an ice pick through the ears, straight through to the brain.
The two extremes joined together, folding in on and wrapping around each other in a dance of noise, seeming to almost become one with themselves and the continuous singing. It set Dean’s whole body on edge, causing the world above him to spin and twist, the candles to burn brighter and the darkness become all-consuming. The lines under him seemed to glow, and the people around him were swaying with their chants, becoming faster and faster and faster, until they surely were to tip over soon enough.
One broke off from the rest, the one at Dean’s right foot, and from his long robe, they drew a long, sharp dagger that glinted with the candle light and the blackness in turn. They kneeled on the ground and raised their hands to the sky, never once stopping in their mad singing, and brought the dagger down to the top of Dean’s shin. With slow, deliberate movements, they pierced the skin and dragged the metal down, down, down, cutting through cloth and skin and coloring both with a dark, flowing red.
All the while, Dean remained motionless, not a sound able to escape him no matter how much he tried to do something, anything. The weight still sat upon his chest, pushing him into the rough stone and holding him down.
Now, having brought the long laceration down to the top of the hunter’s foot, the person stood up, never once breaking the string of words coming from their mouth. When they stood straight once more, the next person, the one at Dean’s right foot, kneeled down and repeated the motions of their companion, so similar that it looked as if a recording were playing on loop as it shifted around the room. They raised their hands to the sky and practically yelled their unintelligible verses, bringing a bloodless yet identical knife from their robe and down onto Dean’s other leg.
The glinting metal moved down the limb and pain radiated for every second of the blade’s movement. The world continued to spin around in the hunter’s vision, and he barely noticed as the second person stood up, only for another to take their place at his right arm. The process started anew, this time bringing the laceration from his elbow to his wrist. By this time, the pain, with no way to be sent out of the body via movement or noise, had started building in his chest with a pressure that pushed and pulled, filling every cavity within his lungs and his heart and his organs to the edge of the breaking point.
He didn’t even notice when the procedure was completed a fourth time on his left arm, and by now, the floor was covered in the dripping liquid, soaking into his clothes and flowing across the floor in steady streams. The fifth person, the one at his head, was the only one left to do something, and they also knelt down, though slower than before.
At this point, the chanting and singing had reached a crescendo, the sounds frothing at their mouths and dripping onto the floor. It was as if they had taken a physical form that flowed around the room, collecting on the ground and building up, like a room filling up with water. It went into Dean’s nose and still-closed mouth, choking him as it went down his throat and into his airways, making him want to gasp as only a drowning man could. He couldn’t, though, and all he could do was let himself sink deeper into the abyss that was slowly consuming his body and mind.
The last person raised their dagger and pierced the skin right above Dean’s heart, and he could practically feel it stop just far enough from the organ to not kill him. The metal tip dragged through the skin and flesh, deeper than any cut so far, and the hunter could feel a scream build up inside of him, igniting the nerves through his arms, legs, and hands. It moved across his chest with an agonizing crawl, an infinity passing before it exited his flesh, blood dripping sluggishly from its tip.
The person was not done, though. They screamed their chanting as they brought the dagger back up, this time piercing the middle of Dean’s torso, this time just below the neck. Once more, the sharp metal was dragged, downward this time with only a small catch on the already broken skin, until it reached his naval. The hunter at this point was at the brink of passing out, the music pounding on the inside of his head as his body burned with the cuts that still flowed freely with blood.
The people were now standing together once more, and together, in one fluid motion, they all raised their hands to the sky in unsettling synchronization. Their voices, since the beginning fighting each other for sense and dominance, now joined together in one great call to above. “Exsurge, Domine, et pluat super nos sulphur! Incendat indignos ignis!”
The last thing Dean registered was the candles erupting in great turrets of fire, igniting the static blood that coated the ground, and a light, blinding in its brightness, enveloping him in a blast. Whatever it was that exploded into existence easily overpowered what was in his system and his back arched, a guttural scream tearing itself from his throat, plunging him into darkness.