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TRAILER == Empty Earth

Summary:

A written "trailer" for my story Empty Earth.
Not a story chapter.
You can skip this if you don't like trailers and just want the story itself.

Notes:

I love movie trailers, so I wondered, why can't we have trailers for written works as well?

Yes, there are excerpts and summaries, but that's just not the same as a selection of lines of text taken from all over the story and then arranged together, is it? Since trailers are normally based on the visual element, maybe this idea is absurd, but then again who says our mind can't produce even more spectacular images?

This is just a fun, little experiment. I'm very curious to see if the concept of a written trailer makes any sense, so I'd love to hear if it worked for even just one person!

With all of these lines ripped entirely out of context while not hearing the speakers, I guess it is a—hopefully entertaining—riddle to figure out who is speaking when.

Yes, this is crazy. Yes, that's totally why I want to try it!

Cover created by the author. Full-size version here.

Music:
I imagined this song playing for the trailer:
"Nexus" by Jo Blankenburg

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

*

"But, Dean, this is God we're talking about. And he just snapped away humanity with nothing but a thought!"

"Where's Cas?"

"I'm not giving up," Dean blurted out before he even knew he was saying it. Two sets of eyes shot over to him, pulled out of the depths they had been sinking into. "I won't," he repeated, just to hammer the point home. "I refuse to believe this is it."

"Rowena!"

"Not even the Queen of Hell has power that compares to that of Death itself."

"We have to get him back."

"God... couldn't get you to," Rowena repeated flatly and Sam practically saw the gears turning in her head.
"Yeah, he's really not all he's made out to be," Dean said with a mirthless chuckle.

Black tears started to trickle out of Sam's eyes. "You have got to be kidding me," Dean whispered desperately.

"And I sure as hell know that we'll never forgive ourselves for what we've done. But we can forgive each other."

"I certainly prefer existing to the alternative, dear."

Her voice grew from a quietly muttered verse on repetition into a burst of a crescendo that illuminated the room in an eruption of light.
"IGNIS AETERNE, CONIUNGE NOS! CAPE TENEBRAM! CLAUDE! COMPESCE!"

"So we're trapped in here, is what you're saying!"

The sight of panic slowly growing on the hunter's face should have worried Jack more than it did. But somehow he felt detached from everything but the searing pain under his fingers.

He watched in silence as Sam's hand slipped on the unstable surface and the hunter cursed under his breath, erasing a ruined symbol and starting it from scratch.
"Sammy! Sam! Draw faster!"

"I am not leaving you behind!"
"SAM!"
Blackness.

Flee! a female voice said in Jack's head. He felt the hope die in his chest, saw the same happen on Dean's face.

"Fuck," he sobbed into Sam's hair.

trust soul bright changed faith true righteous defender creation human angels earth heaven
"Uh... hi?"

The moment he caught himself tilting his head slightly, a shiver of recognition ran over his skin. Shit.

"Castiel," he whispered before even realizing it, surprised at hearing the name leave his lips. The shape of it felt strange now, after he had consciously avoided to say or even think it, fearing the abyss it would open.

"We can't–please, I can't–I can't lose anyone else."

With a glance back over his shoulder, Jack saw countless smoke trails following them not far behind, darkening the sky like an enormous storm cloud.

The light buried itself deep into his chest and he heard screaming, probably his own.

"Run!" Sam told him and sounded strangely stifled, barely audible above the uproar around them.

This was insane. All of it was insane. He was losing it, obviously. Crying more tears in a single day than he had in his whole damn life and nothing of it made any sense whatsoever.

"Awesome!" Dean whispered, and the earth tore open.
"Back! Get back!" Sam shouted through the deep rumbling that made the ground shake beneath Jack.

Sam held his arms out wide as a cyclone of black smoke whirled around his body and blew his hair into his eyes.

"Chuck, he doesn't care about angels any more than he does about humans. He doesn't love anyone but himself. You know I'm right."

His hand resumed the movement, spelling out R E A L M S this time. The shift in the atmosphere between them was tangible as Dean sucked in a breath before asking, "Realms like the Empty?"

There had never been any doubt about the way, but what had been a mere sense of direction now changed into his gravity in this unplace.

This time, when the word of power was spoken, he didn't let it slide away. He gripped it, held it tight with all his strength, claimed it. CASTIEL!

Everything came to a halt. The squirrel was frozen mid-movement, leaves no longer rustling under its feet. A bubble of dead silence surrounded him. The blades of grass near his shrub were no longer swaying in the wind, crystallized in a shard of time.

"No more dying," he whispered, even though they couldn't hear him.

"The End," Chuck proclaimed and Dean dropped like a rock.

B E R E A D Y
When nothing else followed, he murmured, "That's not ominous at all," grabbed his own pack and jogged after Dean and Jack.

*

(Read Empty Earth here!)

Notes:

More Empty Earth art:
two different covers and character posters

Series this work belongs to: