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atreya300 · 3 years

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Slenderman and Creating Real Tulpas

I remember a couple of years ago finding out about Slenderman. It was so creepy that I looked into it a lot, especially when I heard the theory about Slenderman being a Tulpa. As if he wasn’t creepy enough just by being a made up story on the Internet, kids were killing other kids, or stabbing other kids, in order to “please Slenderman”. Clearly a game that they had invented and taken deadly seriously.

A Tulpa is an intended hallucination which can be sentient and have its own thoughts and personality. It is (according to the Tulpa Community, but not, I may add, folkloric legend) only seen by the person who created it, who has done so by prolonged periods of thinking solely about what the tulpa looks like, talks like, moves like etc, thus developing, in essence, another person who is sharing their body and mind, but functions as a separate personality. We know of lucid dreaming, as I have often done it myself. We’re aware that our brains are more than capable of producing extremely real and vivid hallucinations.

So is it entirely impossible that if enough people all put enough thought power into the creation of the same, singular individual, that a tulpa could be formed which could break free of the constraints of individual minds and be a person all of its own, with its own free will and the power to manipulate others? I believe it is possible. Call me crazy. My tin foil hat is firmly in place. It’s hilarious really when you consider that I laughed down the Flat Earthers, yet here I am saying that it’s possible to create an imaginary friend who can turn into a mind-bending, master manipulator.

I didn’t have many friends growing up. So I was one of the kids who didn’t mind admitting that I had invented an imaginary friend. His name was Bill and he was based off of Bill from ‘Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure’ because I was obsessed with that movie. I would talk to him whilst walking home from school alone, ask him what he would do in my place during different situations that I was struggling with and he always had an answer that I imagined. I would say, “Bill, do you think [insert boyfriend name here] is a dick?” and in my head he would instantly say, “Hell yeah he is, you need to dump his ass!”. Of course, I never once thought that I had created another person. It was my imaginary friend. In my head. Made up by me. Well, me and Alex Winter. His instant “responses” was just my own subconscious mind telling me what I really, truly felt, without having to consciously think about it.

Having perused the Tulpa Community it seems to be an extremely dangerous rabbit hole. For one, what they are describing as “tulpas”, at best, mostly seem to be an adult version of an imaginary friend and at worst, a real mental health issue, possibly Dissociative Identity Disorder which is incredibly serious and is being passed off as something that is perfectly normal and almost a uncommon achievement to be able to create a tulpa, rather than the reality which is that there is real medical and psychological help out there for cases such as DID and it should certainly not be explained away as a deliberately induced imaginary friend who will solve all your problems for you. Passing it off as such could potentially make the case even worse. I’m not a psychologist. I’m just using common sense. If you cultivate something, it grows.

So. I have made a decision that I don’t buy into the Tulpa Community. There are also a lot of comments on YouTube videos and forums that are quite blatantly people who are full of absolute shit and others who are just clearly attention seeking. I thoroughly enjoyed the brilliant sarcastic responses to those comments.

Now let’s get serious (ish). Bear with me. Let’s get back to the theory of many people being able to collectively produce a tulpa.

As I said before, I became obsessed with Slenderman. I watched videos (all of Marble Hornets), read newspaper articles, looked at pictures, read stories, until he became my every waking thought. After a week and a half I developed sensations such as paranoia, racing heart, dizziness and the feeling of constantly being watched by something just out of the corner of my eye. I began having horrific nightmares and would wake up drenched in sweat. I stopped being able to lucid dream and wake myself up and was forced to play out the nightmares, helpless. It got to the point where I didn’t want to sleep. The times that my boyfriend had blessedly snored loudly enough to wake my conscious brain, I sat up in bed, exhausted, trying desperately to keep my eyes open and not fall back to sleep. Every shadow in the bedroom seemed to resemble Slenderman and I was convinced that as soon as the lights got dim or it was dark, he was there in the shadows waiting. I stopped going to bed before my boyfriend. I didn’t want to be in the house alone.

Looking back, naturally it all seems totally stupid. Me, a grown 35 year old, scaring myself silly because of a kids’ story on the internet. But what if it really is possible to create a tulpa by using enough collective subconscious power? Thousands of people in the world at the time were reading those same stories and scaring themselves silly like I was. If it was possible to create a tulpa, Slenderman and his fame would most certainly warrant it.

For anyone who isn’t familiar with the 80’s movie ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’, the main bad guy/killer is Freddy Kruger, a demon (who was a bloke who killed kids and then got burned in a fire by their fucked-off parents, then he came back from the dead in peoples’ dreams, as a...you know what, I don’t fucking actually really know what kind of thing Freddy is) who kills people in their dreams. Enough people get to know about him and he suddenly can break free of only being in their dreams and can exist in the real world, killing whomever he chooses in reality. Freddy, is a tulpa. He existed in reality, purely because all the kids talked about him, described him to each other, then dreamed about him, which cemented him more in their brains, until he became a reality. By what was, if I remember correctly, the 407th film featuring Freddy, ‘Freddy vs Jason’ the townsfolk had worked out that the only way to defeat Freddy, was to pretend he didn’t exist. No one was allowed to talk about him, no one could mention his name, and anyone who dreamed about him was given dream suppression pills so they ceased dreaming altogether (boy didn’t I crave Hypnocil during my Slenderman nights). In this way, Freddy became weak and the town was safe (for a while - Stage Right - freaky hockey-mask-wearing-dude-with-mommy-issues).

My point is that from my personal point of view, the Tulpa Community are people who have really good imaginations, like myself and are doing nothing more than imagining another person. They are not “creating” a tulpa. Not in the sense that I think they think they are anyway. I sort of feel like a tulpa is akin to a golem who is created to protect someone or something and is capable of physical destruction in the real world.

I digress. Touching on Slendy for the podcast is something I’ve wanted to do for a while now, but I’ve hummed and hawed because, let’s face it, I’m scared. Slenderman did become a bit too real for me, even if it was in my head and my mind playing tricks on me, but it put me through sheer terror, I was legitimately scared of my own shadow so opening this can of worms is a big deal for me, even if it seems utterly stupid for a grown woman to feel that way. If two young girls can pretend that killing their friend as a “sacrifice to Slenderman” is real, then who’s to say if enough people genuinely hallucinated Slendy and his creepy, murderous personality, that other people could not be compelled to kill? He would become his own person. I’m a tin-foil hat wearing silly girl who believes a lot of ridiculous things (except Flat Earth, you guys are wrong - just saying), but from a mass hallucination point of view, I do genuinely think this could be plausible. And by delving back into this research, not only am I opening up the likelihood of scaring myself silly, into seeing shit that isn’t there, I would also have to be held (partially) responsible for creating the master Slenderman that wipes out the world by making people kill each other. Hmph. And Ted Bundy thought he had some great ideas.

Also, “Tulpamancy” is a thing. Although not according to the Tibetians, where the tulpa originated. Funny that. Almost as if it’s a made up word. (It is. By the Tulpa Community.)

As for the pretend “Tulpa Community”? Some of these people envision their tulpas as characters from ‘My Little Pony’. Make of that what you will. I wouldn’t personally be taking career and life advice off of a fucking horse. All I’m saying.

#slenderman #mystery #weird #tulpa #monster #murder

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dragon-moms · 7 years

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Entry 159 - Gloria

Today we made a decision.

The morning started without much excitement. Baroness was still studying the chamber, so Ivana, Flare, and I tried to collect what scraps we could from the Wizard’s Guild we’d found to help her decypher things. Merry and Myrmidon were taking care of Philly, who was still exhausted from opening the door, they said. Maybe they were being a little too protective, but I didn’t have anything more useful for them to do, either.

“You think this stuff might help with your ritual?” I asked Ivana as I looked through charred parchment for something readable.

“Since it’s not made for a White, I bet it’s going to make perfect sense to an expert,” she said. “I’m just not an expert.”

“This seems readable!” Flare said, waving a book above his head. “And I know some of this stuff! This is all human magic!”

“Let me see that,” Ivana said, taking the book from him and looking through it. “And don’t shake these things around, they’re fucking old and fragile.”

“You know human magic?” I asked him.

“Nope!” he said. “But you’re around this stuff enough, you recognize it, right? It looks a lot different than dragon runes and stuff.”

“Yeah, these diagrams are distinct,” Ivana said. “Half of a lot of the pages are destroyed, but even from that I can tell this is a different sort of magic without being much of a wizard.”

“A dragon-sized text discussing human magic is going to be a huge find,” I said. “Nobody has really felt to delve too deeply into those tiny books of magic we got from the war, besides Philly, for obvious reasons. Too many issues with it.”

“Something we can sell, then,” Ivana said, and then her eyes caught mine. “Or, I don’t know, put to good use, anyway.”

We kept looking.

“Hey, do you think we’ll all get to go home after this?” Flare asked. “Like, once we finish with the prophecy and stuff?”

“You can go home any time,” Ivana said. “Don’t you live with the humans?”

“Oh, well, I was… but maybe that’s not so good? I mean, there’s lots of good people! But maybe the Queen isn’t so good?” Flare said. “I’ve been trying to figure that out… so I figure I’d just live with Mommy for awhile until I did!”

“You can stay in your old chamber as long as you need, terror, if we can ever go back,” I said. “I worry about getting our hopes up too much, though.”

“Won’t the Queen, uh, your Queen, won’t she understand, though? After we fix the problem?”

“Maybe… I hope so,” I said. Reliquary would understand. She would help. The Queen, I was less sure if she could help, even if she understood why we did all this.

In the end, we found several pieces of book that seemed to be about White magic, but it was just that: pieces. There was no real connection between any of it. We weren’t sure if it would be immediately useful. Maybe some researchers years from now could make sense of it.

“We might as well show Baroness,” I said. “Maybe it’ll mean something to her.”

“Yeah, let’s head back. I can work on the Diary or whatever,” Ivana said.

But when we got back, we were met with a chamber full of concerned dragons.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I believe I have discovered the nature of the enchantment,” Baroness said.

“It is much too dangerous for us to use, I am afraid,” Myrmidon said.

“No it’s not!” Philly said. “We have to do this!”

Merry just looked ill.

“Is it that bad?” Flare asked.

“It is… interesting…” Baroness said. “And all the problems have yet to be solved.”

“Why the fuck are we talking around it, then?” Ivana asked. I glanced at Merry, but she looked too worried to even register the curse word. “Let’s solve the problems. Start with what it does.”

“I believe it creates White dragons,” Baroness said. “Or more specifically, White dragon eggs.” She began to go through her notes to show us.

“We trust you,” I said, “and we wouldn’t be able to follow an explanation of how you figured that out anyway.”

“We read a sign!” Flare said. I gave Flare a look. “What? That’s how we figured it out!”

“...yes,” Baroness said. “And I have spent this morning confirming the sign. It seems accurate, from what I can tell.”

“So, what, we make a White egg, then?” Ivana asked. “That would make a White dragon rise, I guess, when it hatches.”

“That is the current theory,” Baroness said. She picked up one of her note pages and pointed to some magical jargon I could not understand. “However, it does not simply make a White dragon from nowhere. It requires a focus.”

“So we need to search for this focus, then?” I asked.

“It’s a person,” Philly said.

Ivana, Flare, and I looked at her in disbelief.

“Yes, I believe that is correct,” Baroness said.

“It’s why we saw those visions of that Blue training to be the Queen. She was going to become a White dragon,” Philly said.

“It seems plausible, Philly, but we are not sure,” Myrmidon said. “Even my mother has reservations about her findings. She does not completely understand the enchantment.”

Philly glared at them a little.

“So… what. We need someone to volunteer?” Ivana said.

“We already have someone who has volunteered,” Philly said.

“We cannot put you at risk,” Myrmidon said.

“I’m a dragon-in-training! What do you think I’ve been training for!” Philly yelled.

“Even if we treat what we have seen as proof of what it does, we do not have proof that it works on ones such as yourself,” Myrmidon said.

“Baroness already said there was a spot sized for a human in the focal point!” Philly said.

“Woah, let’s hold on here,” I said, stepping forward. “Let’s calm down and think about this.”

Everyone fell quiet, unsure what to say.

“An egg is an egg, right?” Flare said, breaking the silence. “Would the egg be the same person when it hatched?”

“I am unable to tell,” Baroness said.

“What happens if you fuck it up?” Ivana asked. “Is the person at the center just gone?”

“I am unable to tell that as well,” Baroness said.

“If we really let Philly do this, doesn’t it require her energy to cast?” I asked. “Like the door?”

“That… is a problem to solve with that plan, yes,” Baroness said.

“There is substantial risk involved,” Myrmidon said. “This is why we cannot continue with this plan, unfortunately.”

“Myrmidon, I’m doing this,” Philly said.

“You are not,” they said.

“Mom, tell them I’m going to do this!” she said.

“I am speaking for your mother because she is having trouble doing so herself,” Myrmidon said. “She is terrified at what you are suggesting and does not want to lose her daughter, and neither do I.”

“I tell you it’d be okay if you wanted to be my other mom, and this is how you repay me,” Philly said, obviously furious.

“I would be a very poor mother indeed if I let you endanger yourself like this,” Myrmidon said.

“You are a mother?” Baroness asked. “I was not informed.”

“It was not… the details of the situation are clearly still being worked out, my lady,” Myrmidon said.

“Clearly,” Philly said.

“Again, let’s calm it down,” I said, giving Myrmidon and Philly strong looks. They both seemed frustrated. Merry, in the middle of this, since Philly was on her shoulder, still looked like she was about to be sick, and was saying nothing. “Philly, they’re just trying to protect you because they care about you,” I said. “Myrmidon, see it from her perspective.”

“I know,” Philly said. “I know it’s dangerous. But me even being here, being with Merry in the first place… my whole life is dangerous. Why should it matter now?”

“I do understand,” Myrmidon said. “I just…” They looked to Merry. “I would like you to have a better life than that danger, Philly, and I know your mother agrees.”

“I don’t have to be a human anymore!” Philly said. “It’s… at first, when Mom first found me, I wasn’t sure, but I know I am now. That’s all I’ve wanted, since I finally had my own life here, with you all. I just want to be a dragon! This is my chance!”

“I trust my mother to run the spell with the utmost caution and care. But what comes out may not be you,” Myrmidon said. “And you are important. You, Philly, are important. Your mother does not want some random new dragon.”

“We don’t know that’s how it works, though,” Philly said. “And… and…” She was having trouble forming words.

“Get it out,” I said. “This is important. Everything on the table.”

“And I’m… not going to… I’m not going to live that long…” she said, quietly. “So if I… if the White that’s made isn’t me, maybe that’s okay… because that dragon can hopefully stay with you both for way longer than I can… if that dragon can make Mom happy, be a better kid than I am, and pay you all back for what you’ve done for me, then…”

“You don’t owe us anything,” Merry said. At some point, she had started crying. “You don’t owe us anything… you know that…”

“I… I mean, I feel like I do…” Philly said.

Merry gave her a little hug. Then she took a big breath. And then she forced a smile onto her face, even though she was still crying. “We’re going to do it.”

“Merry,” Myrmidon said.

“I promised her I would figure this out, this dragon-in-training thing,” Merry said. “So we’re going to do it. But, like, we’ll do it right, we’ll be careful. But we’re going to do it. Okay?” She looked to Philly. “And… and everything is going to work out alright. I have to believe that. I have been believing that. So…”

“So. Let’s start figuring out how to do it, then,” I said. “Baroness, I know this is your chamber, but grab your stuff and let’s give them some space and talk logistics.”

“I understand,” Baroness said, and started collecting her notes.

I eventually managed to get everyone pushed outside.

“Killing a kid takes guts,” Ivana said.

“We’re not killing anyone,” I said.

“Might as well be, using untested magic on her,” Ivana said.

“Surely it’ll be fine,” Flare said. “It’s probably just what’s supposed to happen and stuff!”

“You don’t fucking know that, Flare,” Ivana said.

“No… but it feels right... doesn’t it feel right?” he asked.

“It doesn’t,” I said. “I don’t like it. It’s really risky. But it’s between them in there.” I motioned to the door of the chamber. “From the very beginning, both Merry and Philly promised me one day Philly would be a dragon. It was a completely ridiculous idea. But faced with evidence it might not be? Can’t blame them for wanting to try.”

“Sure you’re not just saying that because it might give you a chance to go home?” Ivana asked. It took me a moment to register it wasn’t in her usual sniping, trying to hurt me way.

“Guess I can’t really completely be. But I didn’t commit treason to protect Philly just to let her die for nothing,” I said. “If I was going to sacrifice her, there were way better moments to do it.” I turned to Baroness. “Baroness, we found some scraps of books on White magic. Think they might help?”

“Perhaps,” Baroness said. We handed her the scraps. She looked at them for a moment. “Perhaps,” she said again. “The more pressing concern is how to power the ritual without Philly, however. She will be unable to cast it if she is the focus of the spell, and I have concerns about her having enough energy if she was to cast it. She has shown in previous trials to get exhausted much faster than a normal dragon.”

“Okay. What do you need?” I asked. “How can we work on that?”

“I require the assistance of the Paladin, Flare,” she said. “I… believe he may be capable.”

“Nifty!” Flare said, grinning. “I’m in.”

“I will need to perform some experiments…” Baroness said.

“I’m great at those, probably!” he said.

“Miss Nobody, how about we keep searching for information about this chamber,” I said. “This is too big for it not to be written down somewhere.”

“I guess, but we haven’t found fucking anything so far,” she said.

“I don’t have any better ideas,” I said.

“Yeah, agreed,” she said, sighing. “Maybe we should just destroy the library in the castle. Maybe parts of the books that survive could help.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But there’s still lots of territory to search first.”

We left Flare and Baroness, and flew off.

“Fucking weird idea, though,” Ivana said.

“What do you mean?”

“Just like… being a human and then not being a human,” she said.

“It’s not that weird,” I said. “I mean, you decided to be Miss Nobody instead of whoever you were.”

“That’s totally fucking different,” she said.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said. “But I’ve learned you just have to let people be who they are. Become who they are. And if you can help them, hey, might as well.”

I could feel Ivana studying me. “Sounds like you have experience with that.”

“I guess so. Bumbled through something like it. But like you said, this is completely different, so maybe it doesn’t apply. All I know is, last time, I ultimately decided, hey, who the fuck am I to decide what will make him happy, you know? Only he can do that. All I can do is help him along. Surely you can see how serious and real what Philly is feeling is. She’s not a kid that has tantrums, and that was a lot of anger and emotion in there. We’d fail, trying to change those feelings. All we can do is help her along.”

“Fucking hate it when you do that,” Ivana said.

“Do what?”

“Fucking… talk like you know shit and somehow make sense,” she said.

“Just means I’m old,” I said.

Ivana just made an annoyed noise.

We searched, but didn’t come up with much of anything but more corpses. In the end, we headed back for dinner.

The chamber was tense. Everyone was worried, it was obvious. But Merry still smiled as she filled my bowl.

“We’ll do this,” she said, more to herself than me, I felt. “You’ll see.”

“I’m sure I will,” I said.

I’m going to do everything I can to make that true.

#dragons #moms #dragonmoms

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supernaturalfreewill · 7 years

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Words: exactly 6,000! WHAAAAAT Sam x Reader Warnings: language, mentions of blood and total darkness, anxiety and fear, some creepy imagery Summary: The Winchesters, Cas, and Crowley try to figure out how to break the spell and the wall of thorns. A/N: Heroic Sam, demons, angels, creepy apparitions... what more could you want in a MIM update? We're nearing the end of this tale. I think the next part (Part 17) will be the conclusion. This is part of a series! Read the other parts here! 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

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Sam was collapsed on the hood of the Impala, staring silently at what had once been Crowley’s earthly headquarters, but now was only a tangle of impenetrable thorns. The trio could see massive slabs of concrete and twisted metal entangled in the wall of vines, some with thick woody trunks grown straight through them, suspending them stories above the crumbling ruins. Sam’s hopelessness was making Dean feel far worse than his anger had.

“Well, Crowley… I’ve gotta hand it to you. I thought you had gotten us into some shit before, but you have taken it to a whole new level. Because you have ‘Mommy issues’, now Y/N is stuck in a fucking fortress of thorns in an apparently unwakeable sleep,” Dean said, shooting another glare at the demon, whose jaw was still red from where Dean had slugged him. “Your personal prophet plan didn’t quite work out as you hoped, did it?”

“Blaming me isn’t going to solve any of our little problems,” Crowley retorted, scowling at Dean and then following Sam’s gaze toward the mess of rubble and barbs. “Damn. You know, I really liked that throne room,” he lamented.

”Little problems?” Dean repeated, aghast.

Crowley shrugged. “Medium-sized problems,” he said.

Dean’s jaw clenched. “You can go to the bottom of the ocean… you can go back in time; you’re going back in there,” Dean said, pointing angrily at the demon.

Dean paced angrily in a tight circle. “Demon warding. Great! That’s just fan-fucking-tastic. What are we supposed to do now?”

”Would you both please shut up?” Sam said forcefully. “How is any of this helping?” Sam looked between the two of them in exasperation. He couldn’t keep his eyes from your prison for long, and was soon staring at the forest of thorns again.

Crowley took in the expression on the younger Winchester’s face and narrowed his eyes. “What’s wrong with you, Moose? You look like you’ve dropped your ice cream sundae.”

A muscle in Sam’s jaw twitched but he didn’t look at the demon.

Crowley looked at Dean and raised his eyebrows. “Seems to be taking it a bit hard, doesn’t he? Is there something I’m missing?” he asked.

Dean took a few purposeful steps closer to the King of Hell. When he spoke, it was with a quiet but dangerous tone. “Listen to my brother and shut the hell up,” he warned. “I’m calling Cas.”

Crowley rolled his eyes. “Oh, goodie… And what exactly do you think the holy tax accountant will be able to do that I can’t? His aching conscience and soulful looks aren’t going to break through that.”

Dean ignored him and shut his eyes, bending his thoughts to the angel and hoping that Castiel would hear him. In a few seconds there was the gentle fluttering sound of his wings. Cas appeared next to Sam and his gaze was immediately fixed on the ruins of Crowley’s former headquarters. When he turned his stare to the demon, his expression was of trembling fury and bewilderment.

”What have you done?” His deep voice was accusatory.

”Nice to see you too. New trench coat? Can’t be a new tie…”

Cas grabbed Crowley by the collar of his suit coat, his voice shaking with anger. “Explain,” he demanded, teeth clenched, his face inches from Crowley’s, who only peered back defiantly and attempted to look unconcerned.

”It’s the fairy tales, Cas. It’s Rowena,” Dean said strongly. He put a firm hand on the angel’s shoulder and Cas released Crowley begrudgingly. Crowley straightened his tie and jacket for what felt like the millionth time that day.

”Cas,” Sam’s voice came from behind him. “Please tell me you can go in there,” Sam pleaded, desperation in his eyes. “Y/N is inside.”

Cas’s eyes snapped to Dean’s face, which was dark and heavy with a furrowed brow. Dean only nodded as if to say it was true.

Castiel’s lips parted and for a moment he couldn’t find his voice. When he did, it was regretful. “I’m sorry. There must be some angel warding…” he trailed off.

”I told you,” Crowley said snarkily.

”Shut up!” Dean growled at him again.

Sam looked crushed and his eyes dropped to the ground, unseeing, as he imagined you laying in the middle of all that chaos. He only hoped that your slumber was dreamless…

_ _ _ _ _ _

Endless black, and only the rippling of the cold water you were standing in; you found that no matter what direction you turned, how far or fast you ran, how loud you screamed, there was nothing. There were only the lonely echoes of your own desperate voice. And now there was the quiet splashing in the distance, just beyond sight, that was freezing your already frigid feet and raising the hairs on the back of your neck.

Instead of this place of emptiness, of gentle waves of water, being peaceful, you felt like you were being smothered, like someone had dropped a heavy, wet piece of black velvet over you. No matter how you struggled, you were caught. The air was oppressive and damp. And the quiet splashing continued.

You could feel yourself beginning to tremble. You took stock of yourself. What did you have with you? Your shaking hands fumbled over your wet jeans and shirt; nothing. You had nothing. Your pockets were empty. You looked down at your bare feet, ghostly beneath the water.

Your breath frosted in the air, crystallizing in a foggy vapor just past your lips, and still the quiet noise came closer. You took a few strides backwards and for a moment all was still except for the gentle lapping of the water at your ankles.

But then it was there again. And closer.

Your shoulders were quaking now and you couldn’t tell if it was from the cold or fear.

Frosty tears stung the corners of your wide eyes. “H-h-hello?” you ventured. Your voice sounded strange to your own ears, cast back in a pitchy echo. The splashing sound grew louder and you tried to retreat but with each step backward you swore it was moving closer more rapidly, as if whatever it was knew you were trying to flee.

Your eyes darted around frantically in the blackness. There was no sense of space here, no sense of time.

Out of your peripheral vision, a shape began to grow and it was clearly the source of the splashing sound; footsteps. At first you couldn’t make yourself turn and face it. It was a shadow somehow darker than the surrounding nothing, and your fear was paralyzing. You knew in your gut that this was some new horror from the pages of brothers Grimm. You clenched your fists, willing, hoping, praying that your fingernails digging into your palms would snap you from the depths of this—this what? This dream? Was this a dream?

Your brain whirred trying to think of the last thing you remembered, trying to come to grips with where you were, this unexplainable place, with whatever was approaching and then—as if a pale spotlight had turned on the approaching shadow began to materialize.

There were broad shoulders, but they were hunched and unbalanced at an unnatural angle. One foot was being dragged by a leg that seemed to bend at a point much lower than the knee and your lips fell open with horror as your eyes fell on the face. It distorted and bloated, with crimson pouring from a wound on the skull. The rivulets of blood were streaming down the side of the head, down the neck, and dripping into the water. What you could see of the eyes was cloudy and unseeing, but still the figure progressed toward you steadily. Your mouth hung open and if you had any breath in your lungs you would have screamed. You shuffled backwards, the sloshing sounds of your hurried feet covering the dripping of the blood into the water and the disturbing cracks coming from the figure.

You realized that something was clinging to the clothes, the skin, the lips of the approaching figure—unmistakably a young man—and you puzzled as you recognized it to be grains of sand. It was falling from the hair into the water as he came closer, one hand extended toward you, groping at the air, and the other hanging lifeless by his side.

You scrambled backward blindly, unwilling to look away despite the urge to be sick from the sight of the wound and what was clearly a walking corpse, inexplicably broken and covered in sand. You suddenly felt your heel step backward onto nothing, the floor dropping out beneath you and as you began to lose your balance, to fall back, you could see that still the figure advanced. You sucked in a breath through a frightened gasp as you plummeted down into the dark water, which swallowed you up in a frigid, silent blanket, all sound deadened for a moment.

But the most peculiar thing happened.

No sooner had you fallen down, broken the surface of the water and been consumed by it, than you somehow suddenly emerged into the air--somehow standing again on your feet, though gasping for breath and drenched to the skin. Your hair hung lankly, clinging to your neck. Streams of water poured from you and created ripples on the surface of the cold water you were again standing in. You scanned frantically around you for the figure but found yourself again quite alone. Your eyes were frozen wide, racked with terror, with confusion, with hopelessness. You doubled over and pressed your palms through the water flat onto the solid floor. “What IS THIS?!” you screamed. And you could hold out no longer and you cried into your hands, the gentle dripping of water from your skin onto the surface a surreal soundtrack to your collapse.

But then… you stifled your sobs with a gasp, as you again perceived another sound. There was a splash somewhere in the distant space, as of something falling into the water…

_ _ _ _ _ _

“Well, this is fun.” Crowley’s voice broke the silence in the interior of the Impala. “Can we stop off at a strip club?” he quipped, leaning slightly forward to look at Dean in the driver’s seat.

When he received only silence in response he turned to look at the angel in the backseat next to him. “‘The Winchesters, an angel, and the King of Hell took a road trip’,” he said. “Sounds like the beginning to a good joke, doesn’t it? Or perhaps a really bad one…”

Cas turned and gave him a fierce stare. “I do not understand how you can be so cavalier at a time like this,” he growled.

Crowley scoffed. “Demon,” he said.

”Cas?” Dean said from the driver’s seat, glancing in the rearview mirror at the angel. Cas looked up expectantly. “Now,” Dean said.

“Now what?” Crowley asked.

Clink.

”Oh, you little weasels!” Crowley’s face burned beet red in anger as he stared down at the handcuffs now on his wrists.

”Demon cuffs,” Dean said. “I believe you’re already familiar with those,” Dean said.

”This is outrageous,” Crowley spat. “Did you dimwitted woodland creatures forget that we’re on the same side here? Same goal; kill the witch!”

”Yeah, well, until this is all over you’re going to have a little extra jewelry, your highness,” Dean said brusquely. “And did you honestly think we would just walk you into our place, completely unchecked? How stupid do you think we are?”

”I still think this is wrong,” Sam said quietly.

Dean’s jaw tensed and he glanced over at his brother, hunched and pale in the passenger seat. Dean hesitated. “I know…”

Sam’s eyes turned toward his big brother and Dean felt like he had been punched in his stomach. “How could we leave Y/N behind?” It was almost a whisper, and Dean was keenly aware that Crowley was listening intently.

He cleared his throat, hoping Crowley couldn’t see the tortured look in Sam’s eyes. “I know. But we need a plan, and for that we need resources and a safe place to figure this shit out… and that’s the bunker.”

Sam gulped, though it did nothing to dislodge the tightness in his throat. Cas reached forward and put a hand on his shoulder.

”We will figure this out,” he said, his deep voice calm. Crowley eyed the action.

”There is something else going on, isn’t there?” he said. “Moose?” he prodded, leaning forward.

Sam ignored him, keeping his eyes turned out the window, though they were unseeing. He couldn’t get the thought of you alone in that fortress out of his mind. And he had a horrible feeling that whatever state you were in, wherever your mind was—knowing Rowena—it would not be peaceful.

_ _ _ _ _ _

”Sit down,” Cas said, carelessly shoving Crowley down into a wooden chair at one of the tables.

”I have to say,” Crowley said, glancing around, “I expected more.”

Dean glared at him. “If you’d like we can take you to your previous accommodations.”

Crowley pursed his lips. “I think I’m fine here,” the demon replied.

”If you have something helpful to add, speak up. Otherwise, shut up,” Dean barked.

Sam rushed back in from the library with a stack of books and papers as high as he could manage and dumped it onto the center of the table. “I’ve pulled everything I could find on spell work and powerful texts. Maybe there will be something in one of these that can help us figure out how to break the spell.”

”I’ll pull everything I can find on arcane or magical botanical species. Perhaps we can find some solution for the hedge of thorns,” Cas added. He rushed from the room and Crowley watched him go, looking unconcerned.

Dean grabbed the top book and tossed it at the demon. “Here,” Dean said. “Make yourself useful.”

Crowley caught the book in his cuffed hands and cast an hateful look in the brothers’ direction, but he bit back whatever venom he had been considering spitting and simply opened the cover.

Sam and Dean both grabbed books and were soon hunched over them too…

_ _ _ _ _ _

Dean pushed back from the table, teetering on the back two legs of his chair. “Another dead end,” he said, slamming the heavy cover of the volume in front of him closed. “You having any luck, Sammy?”

Sam shook his head, but didn’t tear his eyes away from the text in front of him. Crowley’s eyes were on Sam’s face, narrowed in study.

”Hey,” Dean barked, noticing Crowley’s gaze. “Research. Go!”

The King of Hell narrowed his eyes in dislike at Dean and took one final look at the younger brother before doing as he was told and flipping the page in front of him.

Dean sighed and ran his hands over his face. “Hey,” he said. “Wasn’t there a—a dragon in the Sleeping Beauty story? I mean—not like the dragons we’ve fought before with the gold and the virgins but an actual, giant, reptilian dragon?”

”Not in the original story. That was a Disney addition,” Sam said. His tone was blank and empty as he closed the file in his hands and began to reach for another.

”Huh,” Dean said, turning the corners of his mouth down and nodding. “Well, that’s good news for once.”

Suddenly Sam looked up as if lightning had just struck him. “The original story,” he murmured. “I’m an idiot!”

Dean glanced at him with raised eyebrows. “Sam?”

Sam’s eyes whirred from side to side just like the thoughts suddenly rushing through his brain. “The original story, Dean!” His hands flew to the piles and stacks of books in the middle of the table and he was shoving them aside, digging for a specific volume, heedless to the cascading piles of paper.

Dean watched in perplexity. “Whoa. What? What is it?”

Cas apparently heard the commotion and came in from the library where he was having little luck with the ancient botanic texts he had pulled from the shelves.

”In the original story, Briar Rose, the—the princess who is cursed—is supposed to die when her finger is pricked. But this wise women, or a fairy depending on the translation, is able to soften the curse so that she and the kingdom fall into this unwakeable sleep for a hundred years,” Sam explained, his face eager and fixed on Dean’s.

Dean shook his head. “Ooookaaay… help me out here, Sammy. I’m not getting it.”

”I’m certainly not waiting around one hundred years for my prophet,” Crowley scoffed.

”Your prophet?” Cas growled, giving the demon a threatening glare.

”Shut up!” Sam yelled. “The prince—the one who finally makes it through the hedge--“ Sam suddenly stalled out. Despite his realization a sudden new fear had seized him.

”What? What is it?” Dean urged, confused now by the stunned expression on Sam’s face and frustrated by his silence.

Crowley was the next to speak in a knowing tone. “I’ll be damned,” he uttered. He laughed at his own phrasing. “Well, that couldn’t be more true…” he said off-handedly to the angel, who only continued to glare at him in dislike. His eyes drifted back to Sam, who was still lost in an internalized whirl. “I knew there was something you weren’t telling me…”

Dean cast only a sideways glance at the King of Hell before turning his eyes back to Sam.

”We don’t have to look for some obscure solution to break the spell,” Crowley said, throwing his book aside. “We just have to get Moose to his Moosette.” He sat up straighter in his chair, the handcuffs still on his wrists clinking against the wood of the table.

Cas turned his cobalt eyes to the younger Winchester. Sam was still refusing to look at anyone.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Crowley started, “but, ‘true love’s kiss’ will undo everything.”

Dean sat back heavily in his chair and ran a hand over the stubble on his jaw, the weight of this new development sitting profoundly on his chest. He turned to catch the angel’s eyes. “You think?” he asked, anxiety written in the lines on his forehead.

”If Rowena manifested the spell based on the text,” Cas replied, nodding seriously, “it should work.”

Crowley turned and pointed back and forth between Dean and the angel. “You know I’m not talking about you two, right?” He said with a cheeky grin.

Dean rolled his eyes and clenched his jaw. “Alright, that’s enough,” he snapped. Crowley only looked more pleased with himself. “What if she changed it? I mean she changed the spinning wheel to the rose thorn. Could she have changed the thing that breaks the spell too?”

Cas looked unsure. “I don’t know. The spinning wheel was merely the vehicle by which the curse was delivered. It wasn’t an important part of the story. Perhaps that’s why she was able to change it.” Cas leaned on the table with his hands. “This—this is an important part. I think it would have been much more difficult to change,” he said. He was looking at Sam, trying to read his expression. “It should work.”

Sam stood abruptly and the wooden chair legs groaned as they slid on the cold tile floor. He paced the length of the room. “Assuming...” he started, but he faltered.

Dean watched his little brother helplessly. “Assuming?” he prodded.

Sam froze in his frenzied pacing. “Assuming it’s—“ The fear that had seized him was palpable in his chest. He felt it with every beat of his heart. Sam knew without a doubt that he was in love with you. He knew it with every fiber of his being. But what if—what if he couldn’t wake you? What if he kissed you and you slept on? That would be… beyond devastating… It would mean not only that he would perhaps have to live without you, but that what he felt was not returned…

Cas approached Sam, easily reading the chaos in his eyes. “Sam.”

Dean puzzled over his little brother’s distress and Crowley only looked on passively.

”You have nothing to fear,” the angel said. “Do you not truly understand why Y/N left in the first place?” Sam’s eyes lifted to Cas’s face and there was still doubt and turmoil in them. “Y/N left here, where she was safe and happy, because she believed she was endangering you. She cared more about protecting you than any risk to herself on the outside from Heaven or Hell or the nightmares that plagued her.” Cas put a hand firmly on the younger Winchester’s shoulder. “If that is not true love, than true love does not exist.”

Sam shut his eyes and seemed suddenly exhausted. His shoulders hung heavily on his frame and he heaved in several breaths. When he opened his eyes again the turmoil seemed to have subsided somewhat.

”Not to ruin the moment after such a moving speech,” Crowley said, “but we still have a teeny little problem. How are we going to get Moose to his Moosette in one piece when she is surrounded by a hedge of thorns that seem intent on tearing apart anything that comes near it, hmm?”

There was a tense silence, and Cas was about to return to the botanical texts in the next room when this time Dean sat up straight and a smirk grew on his face. “We’ve got one thing they didn’t have in the Brothers Grimm,” he said.

Cas tilted his head in a question and Sam and Crowley peered at him in curiosity.

”Flame throwers,” he said with a grin.

”Flame launchers?” Sam repeated. “Dean, did you forget about the part where this is an enchanted hedge bound with powerful spell work? I don’t think brute force is going to work here!”

Dean was already on his feet, starting to rush farther into the bunker. Sam followed quickly on his heels. Cas watched the brothers rush from the room with curiosity but only came and stood over Crowley, his brow dark.

”It won’t be brute force,” Dean said over his shoulder. He stopped and thought for a moment and shrugged, conceding a little. “Okay, it might be a little bit of brute force. But I’m thinking we make a little modification,” he said, a grin glued to his face. He pushed open a door and flicked on the light, going straight for a trunk near the back of the storage area. He thrust the lid open and pulled out two ceramic jars. He looked at his brother expectantly and wiggled his eyebrows. “Eh?”

Sam wasn’t sure how to react. “Holy oil?”

Dean nodded. “Holy oil!” His expression was barely suppressed exhilaration.

_ _ _ _ _ _

”A holy oil flame thrower?” Sam repeated, again at Dean’s heels as the two of them rejoined the demon and the angel.

Crowley raised his eyebrows and nodded as he took in the containers in Dean’s hands. “It’s not a bad idea,” he said.

Sam let out a wry laugh and gestured to the demon. “See! Crowley thinks it’s a good plan, Dean! Isn’t that some kind of red flag?” he insisted.

Cas was conspicuously quiet as Dean looked at him for support.

”Okay, come on, Sammy! It’s holy fire! It’s—it’s gonna be ‘holy inferno!” Dean said. Sam gave him another exasperated and questioning expression. “It’s like superheated, concentrated God power! Are you tellin’ me you think this isn’t gonna cut right through that hedge?”

”I don’t know but I don’t think we should just go blasting in there and burning everything to hell! Y/N is IN there, Dean!”

”Well, she can’t die,” Crowley interjected with a shrug.

Sam gave him a fiery glare. “That doesn’t mean we should maim her!”

Dean let out a frustrated sigh and set the holy oil down on the table with more force than was necessary. “We’re not going to maim her. Nothing is going to happen to Y/N,” he said. There was determination in his green eyes. “Sam, I’m just trying to come up with a solution here. You got a better idea? Does anyone?” he asked, looking again to Cas and Crowley. “Cas? Anything in those botanical texts we should know about?”

Cas’s brow only furrowed farther.

”A fruitless search,” Dean said, nodding, gesturing to the angel.

”Well… I wasn’t searching for fruit…” the angel said.

Crowley rolled his eyes and Dean could only pinch the bridge of his nose.

Dean looked to Sam, again almost deferring to him to lead, a rarity. ”What do you want to do? We could sit here and bang our heads against these old moldy books and dusty files for God-knows how long. And there is no guarantee that anything in any of these,” he said, grabbing the nearest hard cover, “is even going to help us. In the meantime, we could be here long enough for Rowena to figure out some other way to come and murder all of us. And then what?”

Sam’s jaw clenched and he averted his eyes to the floor. He heaved a heavy sigh that seemed loud in the thick silence. “Alright,” he conceded. And he hoped he wouldn’t regret it.

_ _ _ _ _ _

Dean slammed the trunk and looked at the duffel bag near Sam’s feet. “You think it’s enough?” he asked.

Sam’s gaze was already fixed on the towering tangle of thorns. “It better be,” he said.

Dean shouldered the bag. “Alright. Let’s go,” he said. Sam stopped him with a firm hand on his chest.

”Whoa. You’re not going in there,” he said.

”Why the hell not?” Dean replied, grit heavy in his voice.

”There’s no reason for two of us to go. It just needs to be me,” Sam said. His eyes were intense and Dean studied his unyielding expression.

”What if you need back-up?” Dean asked, but he unshouldered the bag and place the strap in Sam’s outstretched hand.

”Back-up getting torn to pieces?” Sam asked, raising his eyebrows. “I think I’ll manage. Besides—if I can’t make it in there, there’s no good you can do.”

Dean’s brow darkened. “I could pull you out,” Dean said seriously. The way Sam now avoided his eyes did nothing to soothe Dean’s worry.

“Just—stay here with Cas and watch out for Rowena,” Sam said, hanging the strap of the make-shift flame thrower loaded with holy oil on his other shoulder. “I have a feeling once this starts she’s going to show.”

”If I know my mother, she’ll be here as soon as there’s blood drawn,” Crowley said. “And speaking of, I’d like to be freed from these shackles now. It won’t do much good having a powerless demon here in the fight with the witch, now will it?”

Dean’s jaw clenched and Sam saw the muscle twitch. He looked to the angel who nodded and Dean produced the key to the demon cuffs and unlocked them from Crowley’s wrists warily.

Crowley stretched and cracked his knuckles, immediately conjuring a glass of Scotch. Cas glared at him. “What? What’s a show without refreshments?”

Dean shook his head and turned back to Sam. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, unable to find the right words. “…Be careful,” he said.

Sam nodded. “I will.” Cas gave him a reassuring nod and with that he turned and started toward the hedge.

”Oh, and Sam,” Dean called after him. “If something does go wrong, you better believe I’m pulling your ass out of there. Okay?”

Sam said nothing and tore his eyes away from his brother’s, doing his best to swallow down the lump in his throat.

_ _ _ _ _ _

You shivered in the damp darkness. Your arms you wrapped about yourself as tightly as you could in an attempt to trap some heat near your frigid core. Droplets of water from when you had plunged into the water still clung to your skin, blending in among the goose bumps peppering your arms.

Your shivering as a result of the cold blended with newfound terror as you again heard something moving, rushing through the water in the distance. There was much more noise than before and you wondered if you would become prey to multiple horrors now.

You’d given up on running away. Your backward plunge into the dark water and subsequent peculiar emergence had been so terrifying and disorienting that you didn’t dare to move your feet from the solid ground they were now on.

All you could do was wait.

You strained your hearing to its limit, realizing with horror that the splashing noises were very clearly footsteps. Something was walking toward you in the still water again.

But the sound was coming from all around you. A splash in front of you would sound just after one to your right and left, and then more noise from behind you overlapped and followed. It was the unmistakable sound of many things taking dragging steps through the water, a circle of unknown entities closing in about you.

Your shaking became uncontrollable and fearful tears rolled down your cheeks from wide eyes. But all of a sudden the splashing stopped. The watery footsteps stopped. Your breathing was audible and ragged in your throat. Your breath frosted just beyond your lips and hung in the dark air in a could.

Your turned from side to side, peering around you, expecting something to lunge out of the pitch blackness at any moment.

But the only perceptible something was now the steady, quiet drip drop of water from all sides. It was uneven and matched the sound of the drops of moisture that still occasionally fell from your sodden hair into the water with a lonesome plink. You weren’t sure if this quiet sound was more or less terrifying than the watery footsteps.

You didn’t have long to wonder.

In another moment, the first entity came into view. And then another. And then another… until there was a circle of nine surrounding you. The source of the dripping was explained as they hovered just over the surface of the water. Rivulets of blood mixed with water dripped down their feet and fell onto the dark pool, creating expanding ripples.

They were ghostly pale with blank dead eyes. Despite the lack of any reason, you were certain that all those blank eyes were boring into you and you wished you could look away. Unsettling smiles on the faces of some revealed teeth that resembled fangs, sharp and threatening. Others only stared into you expressionless.

Your heart was whirring in your chest and you felt each beat painfully in your fingertips and your toes. The thundering of your blood was suddenly deafening in your head. All you wanted to do was escape. How could you?

The nine began to drift closer, still alarmingly solid before your eyes. You were surrounded. Where could you go? What would they do to you when they reached you? You didn’t even know what they were… Spirits? Demons?

They closed in closer and closer and now your ragged breathing was so shallow and hurried you felt as though you weren’t breathing at all. Suddenly you felt as if you were watching yourself from above. Any moment you would be torn to pieces in this place where space and time didn’t seem to exist. And then what? Would you emerge again to do it all again? To fall prey to the next horror?

Suddenly you seemed to snap back into yourself with a gasp and as you spun around you found yourself again alone, though reddish clouds drifted lazily around you from the drops of blood that had fallen into the water, proving to you that you hadn’t imagined it.

You turned again in the same spot, glancing in paranoia around you only to be met with the same expansive, crushing darkness… until…

Something was suddenly different.

There was a crackling sound and your peripheral vision perceived a change, an orange and red glimmer. Fear gripped you again, freezing your heart, but it soon faded inexplicably as the glow grew. It was warm and familiar.

You squinted at the distant spot, finally uprooting your feet and trying to move closer, but you couldn’t close the gap. As the warm spot of dancing color grew there was a sudden pinhole of vibrant white that shot toward you into the darkness like a lance of light. You raised an arm to shield your eyes from the sudden contrast but your eyes grew in amazement as you studied this ray.

You raised a tentative hand and hesitantly reached for the bolt of light. You gasped when it illuminated your hand and studied the broken shadows thrown from your fingers blocking the light. Your eyes darted back to pinhole and you realized in wonder that it was still growing, widening, vibrant oranges and reds crackling and dances around the edges. The ray of light streamed through the darkness and you thought it was the most beautiful thing you had ever seen.

As you bathed in this curious streak of light you noticed something floating in its illumination, dancing in the air the dust. A fleck drifted toward you and you opened a hand to let it fall on your palm.

You examined the little fleck that sat delicately in your hand and pressed a finger to it. It crumbled and smeared leaving a shadow of grey charcoal on your palm. “Ash…” you wondered aloud. Was the blackness burning away?

As your mind whirred and puzzled the hairs on the back of your neck stood upright and you heard a whisper which was somehow both deafening and faint at the same time. All it spoke was your name.

You knew that voice. Even in that echoing whisper you knew that voice. “Sam,” you said into the darkness. “Sam!” You stared again at the expanding pinhole, now a window into blinding light, and a feeling you thought you would never have again swelled in your chest; hope.

_ _ _ _ _ _

Sam let out a pained yell as thorns dragged over his upper arm, tearing it open in long gashes, which immediately sent blood running down over his forearm and hand, staining his skin crimson in rushing streams. He heaved some deep breaths, coughing in the smoke, staring at his injuries and trying to push down the pain in his arm. He turned the blaze of holy fire pouring from the end of the make shift flame thrower in his hand to the vine that had just grappled at him. The wood groaned and screamed, steam poured from cracks that looked like veins running up and down the thick bark until they split and blackened before carrying the fire up the stem like molten metal. Sam shielded his soot smudged and sweat-drenched face from the new burst of flames and retreated a few steps.

He watched anxiously as the flames grew and the vines slowly seemed to draw back. A rain of debris from above pelted him and he stumbled backward as the chunks of stone and concrete grew in size, falling from their places caught in the vines above. A timely glance up and Sam threw himself to one side as a chunk of stone and rebar the size of a compact car came crashing down.

Flecks of rock and sparks flew in the whirl of smoke, some striking his face. Sam’s chest heaved in the hot air but he pressed forward again.

The holy fire was working.

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