Missed Chapter 24?

Free Supernatural Fanfiction – Chapter Summary:

Research deepens: demons and angels ranked, Lucifer’s all explained, Dean trains to sense and block energies.

Rating: PG-13
Contains:  Supernatural themes, demon lore, and mild language

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE:  
Dean’s Practice

Spring 2011

IT SEEMED THAT WHENEVER WE GOT A LITTLE AHEAD ON THINGS, something else threw us backward or made us ask more questions. For example, we got the Colt back—but Death was released on Earth. Anything about myself and the apocalypse remained a mystery, including the newer information that Meg had been tied to my father’s oppression case. She said she was reassigned and didn’t carry out the plan. Who—or what—was she reassigned to, and why? I wondered if it had anything to do with Sam and Dean. According to them, she worked with Azazel. The name didn’t sound familiar in relation to anything that had happened to me. The demon associated with us was named Chaos.

Regardless of how it related to me, it made me wonder how long the demons had been planning these things. Cas hardly showed up anymore. He seemed preoccupied with the angels and keeping them away from us. He didn’t provide any new information on the apocalypse or the prophecy. If it weren’t for all the attacks and weird abilities, I would’ve wondered if someone hadn’t just made the whole thing up. What was even more frustrating—we’d gotten nowhere with the rings. Trying to find information on them proved difficult and nearly nonexistent. The only good thing that happened to us was the anam cara revelation. It brought some purpose back into our days that the current futile research couldn’t provide.

THE ANAM CARA PROVED TO BE VERY INTERESTING. I believed Dean was catching on to my gift a lot faster than I had to hunting. Perhaps it was the power of suggestion. Although he caught on quickly, he didn’t seem able to project his ability as far as I could. We also discovered later that the farther I was from him, the less power he had. He still had it, but it was much weaker than if I used my powers at the same distance.

I began to show him how to block energies when out in public. With my own sensitivities growing, I usually blocked energies as much as I could. For safety purposes, I left myself open within a certain radius. When something was after us, it would latch onto and focus on our energies. This was how I could tell when something was coming. It was like how Dean found me in the kitchen—I didn’t project my own energy out, but I felt it when he found mine.

Whenever I could, I tried to test his abilities. Since our lessons at Bobby’s, we’d only had a few encounters with demons. No angels yet. I had no choice but to work with what I had. On an early spring day, we ate lunch outside. Reaching out about a block around us, I felt for different things. Since the end of the year, I’d been able to pinpoint very low-level demons that didn’t concern us. These demons were more like the little voice in your head saying you should or shouldn’t do something bad. It would be something simple and almost innocent like, You don’t need to pick up that wrapper and put it in the trash can. Someone else can do that. They didn’t have enough strength to possess a person.

Demons grew more powerful with each soul they corrupted. As demons grew in power, they would slowly take charge over other lower demons. Hence, they would also have partial control over the souls the lower demons corrupted, making them even more powerful. However, no demon was more powerful than Lucifer. And Lucifer, I believed, made sure things stayed that way. He was the king of the demon realm.

Lucifer was different from most demons. He was a fallen angel. Once upon a time, he was the favored angel of God. However, his refusal to obey God—and, as the story goes, his attempt to overthrow God Himself when he was forced to place humans above him—landed him in his eternal punishment of Hell. He wasn’t the only angel who fell. Others fell with him, and throughout time, more found themselves thrust into Hell. These fallen angels were different from most of the demons we encountered on a daily basis. They had more power. Not the same power they once had as angels, but more than a demon created from a human soul. Just as they had ranks as angels, they had corresponding ranks in Hell. The higher the rank, the greater the power.

During our research, I found the easiest way to understand these ranks was to think of them as low, medium, and high. The low-rank demons were new and usually created from a human soul that had been corrupted. They tried to get ahead in Hell. They were tortured and found that if they corrupted souls on their own, less pain would be inflicted upon them. Hence, these low levels were given a chance to prove themselves, coming back to the earthly plane to gain souls for their masters—those inflicting the pain. However, doing their master’s bidding wasn’t always easy. It took demons years, even centuries, to gain enough experience and success to move beyond their master’s control. Eventually, the master would consider them workers and allow them to take possession of people. They were tortured less and given more chances to travel to the earthly plane.

Through more souls, demons could rise to the medium levels of Hell. This was where most demons remained. They gained control of new demons and had the ability to move about more freely within both realms. The upper-level demons had control over them. These were the princes of Hell—the old angels who had fallen and wanted revenge on Heaven. The ultimate position was Lucifer’s. He knew the most about Heaven and God’s plans—however limited that knowledge was. He was the boss. The one with the ultimate plan to dethrone his father and take over everything, all while making those who got in his way—or supported God—suffer.

Finding research on demons was hard, but a gut feeling told me that was as close to the truth as we were going to get. Angels—I knew a little better. With James and even Cas, we got a general idea about them.

ANGELS ALSO HAD RANKINGS. Low-level angels were the ones who worked directly with humanity. These were the guardian angels, regular angels, and archangels. Yes, archangels were considered low-level in the Heavenly order. They were fierce warriors and messengers who carried out the commands of God. Regular angels also engaged in battles, usually against demons. They assisted archangels and helped stop incidents that went against God’s plan. Cas, a regular angel, had his own garrison. He was losing favor with his brethren because of his support in stopping the apocalypse.

The medium angels were those who commanded the low-level angels. They took on bigger roles and didn’t work directly with humans. They were the middlemen of the heavenly chain—not in the inner God circle, but not getting their hands dirty with humanity either. These angels were Powers, Virtues, and Dominions. Cas told us that only a few of these angels were left in Heaven. The others had disappeared along with God.

The upper echelon of angels worked directly with God. These were the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones. It was believed that Lucifer had been part of this group before he fell. We couldn’t find much about these angels, and Cas had never had contact with any. He assumed that his superiors in the middle rank received their information from this group. He wasn’t sure how many were still around after the slow disappearance of the other angels—and God. Cas believed that the leak about the prophecy came from someone in this rank, but he didn’t know for certain. To us, it seemed like there was a lot of secrecy going on up there, which essentially meant trouble.

I wasn’t sure, but being able to block things helped me stay off both the demonic and angelic grids. As my powers increased through my bonding with Dean, I noticed we weren’t as bothered by angels or demons as we had been at first. Cas was still able to locate us because I tried to keep the connection open between us. Since I was always with Sam and Dean, if Cas found me, he was pretty certain to find them as well. I wondered if, when this was all over, he would remove the markings on Sam and Dean’s ribs that made them untraceable to angels. Dean would probably be able to block more fully like me soon. He wasn’t always open to things around him—which was good. It meant he naturally blocked them.

PERIODICALLY, I TESTED DEAN ON THE ENERGIES AROUND US. I considered it payback for all those pop quizzes he gave me when I was learning about monsters and defense. After we ate lunch, I ran him through the exercise of reaching out to find any demons in the area. It took him a little while at first, but he finally found one not that far away. He started to get up.

“Dean, it’s okay,” I said. “You can hardly feel that one, right?”

“Yeah,” he said hesitantly. I knew having a demon so close would bother him.

“It’s because it’s a very weak, low-level demon. This is the type of demon that everyone can overcome—and actually do overcome—every day.”

“I still don’t get why we just don’t take them all out,” Dean complained, settling back in his chair.

“Well, when we send them back to Hell, they lose a lot of their power. These very low-level demons don’t really have any power yet, so it wouldn’t make much of a difference. We can’t kill demons this way, and they aren’t strong enough to possess a person we could kill with the knife.”

Sam’s brows furrowed at this thought.

“It’s pretty easy to ignore those ones and feel for the higher ones,” I said. “Try blocking that one and reaching out again. Do you feel anything?”

I knew the answer was no, but I wanted to see what he could do.

He sat in silence for a little while. “I’m not getting anything.”

“Good,” I said. “Because there isn’t any in the immediate area.”

“Except that low-level,” Sam said.

“Right,” I admitted.

“And you’re sure it’s not possessing someone?” Sam asked.

“Is it, Dean?” I asked.

A moment passed. “I—I don’t think so.”

He turned his head in the direction of the demon, but he didn’t notice anything.

“It’s just hovering right now. I can feel it moving, and it’s not moving like a human would,” I said. “So we’re good.”

It was weird, considering at this time last year, I would’ve never been able to do this.Overall, getting Dean more experience with this gift wasn’t easy. We basically had to wait until we came across something for him to try. He did very well, though. He wasn’t as strong as I was in the ability, but he definitely held his own. Now we just needed him to meet an angel to try it out.

Image by Copilot

Ready for Chapter 26?