DA/SPN Fanfic: Snake Demon (8/?)
Title: Snake Demon
Author: poestheblackcat
Rating: PG-13
Crossover: Dark Angel/Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: Max/Alec-ish, Sam, Dean
Warning/Spoilers: Both Seasons of DA, up to Season 3 finale of SPN and parts of Season 4, may be AU in future chapters
Summary: Third in "Ghosts of the Past" stories. Minoan runes appear all over Alec's body. What do they mean and how are they connected to the Winchesters? And why is Alec Dean's clone?
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to their respective owners.
AN: I did my paper on the Minoans, not on their religion specifically, but I came up with a lot of stuff that I can maybe weave into whatever my imagination provides and make a new mythology that uses aspects of both shows. Whoo-big task. So, here goes! This chapter is just one really long explanation of my half-made-up myth. Sandeman talks a lot. A lot. Hope it’s not too lame or boring! I actually was going to have it longer but you can only take so much exposition at one time, right?
Snake Demon
Chapter 8
“My people,” Carl Sandeman began, “are originally from the island of Crete.
Dean tapped the gun on the table, making a metallic clicking noise. “Hence the Minoan writing. Go on.”
The old man paid Dean’s impatience no attention and took his time starting again from the beginning. “My people’s origins were in Crete,” he repeated. “There, thousands of years ago, the king of the land reigned supreme. You’ve probably heard of the most famous. King Minos, he was called. He was featured in the Greek Minotaur myth as a spineless and arrogant cuckold.” He scoffed.
“The king in my people’s stories was quite different. In the golden days of Crete, the king was the High Priest of the people as well. They worshipped a variety of deities, but the Mother Goddess Potinia held the highest position. The snake was her sacred animal.”
“Do you know,” he said, as if as an aside from his story, “they’ve found tables in the ancient houses and palaces that had grooves carved into the legs so that their sacred snakes could climb up and eat from dishes on the tabletop?”
Sam looked interested while Dean made a face. “Oh, that’s nice. They had pet snakes. I hate snakes. Stupid Donnie and Marie, stupid ghost sickness,” he muttered and shuddered dramatically.
“Anyway,” Sandeman coughed and continued, “Potinia had a son, Diwe, who was also recognized as divine. The priests and priestesses would sacrifice bulls to them and there would be great festivals held to honor them. Bull-jumping and feasting, libations, praying, even human sacrifices at times.”
Looking at the reminiscing expression in the old storyteller’s face, Dean almost thought he might burst out in a “good old days” speech. He certainly looked it at any rate. Great.
Sam noticed Dean’s mind wandering and shot him a look. ‘Pay attention, dude.’ He glanced at the gun still in Dean’s hand. ‘And put that thing away before you hurt someone.’ Their silent communication system worked so well that Sam could send all that and be sure that he was understood. Not that Dean always “listened.”
Sandeman’s cultured voice cut into their wordless conversation. “Then around 1600 BC, the volcano on the nearby island of Thera erupted, leaving chaos in its wake. In one fell swoop, the Cretan Priest-King lost all credibility and his peoples’ faith in him wavered. This allowed the mainland Greeks from Mycenae to take control of the island, and the great days of Crete ended then.”
Sam nodded as he recalled his Ancient Greek history. Archaeological discoveries in the past century had uncovered some of Crete’s past but not much.
Sandeman’s voice turned bitter. “Those whom I call my people are the descendants of those who remained faithful to the king. Our stories tell of how Diwe had always longed for more power, and of how he laid low, waiting for the opportune time to take control.”
Watery blue eyes looked far away into the past, through the dirty walls of the old house and across thousands of miles of land and ocean to the small island in the Aegean. “Then the volcano and the earthquakes occurred and Diwe took action against his mother Potinia. There was a battle, and it ended with Potinia taking refuge in a cave in the mountains. There, she nursed her wounds. When she had regained her strength, she mated with a snake and bore another son, Ijerejo. This son grew rapidly and soon was strong enough to avenge his mother.”
Dean leaned forward, interested. War, finally. War he got. Mating with snakes was gross, though.
Sandeman took a sip of his now-cold tea and grimaced. “Ijerejo used his mother’s snake as his emblem and declared war on Diwe, who had taken the sacred bull as his crest. He gathered followers, those who still worshiped Potinia, as his soldiers. The war fought now, the Mewijo Makawo, ‘little battle,’ we call it, ended with Diwe once again the victor.” The ancient language rolled easily off of the old man’s tongue.
“The second war, the Mezoemi Makawo, ‘great battle,’ was terrible. It ravaged the countryside, the palace at Knossos, the power center of the island, was burned down, and the land it stood on cursed. The palace was never rebuilt. Ijerejo lost. His body was too weak.” Sandeman raised a finger.
“But before his death,” he said ominously in a low voice, “he prophesized that he would return to lead them and the faithful would once again be powerful and they would rule the world. He fed them each a drop of his own blood to make them stronger.”
Sam and Dean glanced at each other. Feeding magically-charged blood to humans to change them was a concept they were all too familiar with.
The ex-Familiar’s blue eyes blazed. “These faithful he called the Mujomeno, ‘initiates,’ and to this day, that is one of the names my people refer to themselves by. These first Mujomeno were instructed to keep the ‘god-blood,’ pade-wono, strong in their children by mating with specially chosen partners. Those children with enough ‘god-blood’ in their veins would survive the ‘death rain’ that would cover the earth heralding his arrival.
“And so,” Sandeman concluded his history lesson, “My people have lived in hiding from the world for thousands of years, breeding with partners selected for their genetic qualities. Ijerejo left us with a way to test if the pade-wono flowed in our children’s blood. It grew into an elaborate ceremony, a coming of age initiation ritual. The third child, third because the first two births were slain to symbolize the pure human first followers of Ijerejo in the Mewijo and Mezoemi battles, the third child would be taken at the age of seven and cut with a knife coated with the blood of a special snake, one of the descendants of Potinia’s sacred snakes, Ijerejo’s brethren.”
The brothers frowned at each other. “A test,” Sam said. “So how would you know if they did have this god-blood?”
“Because of the unavoidable diluted blood caused by outbreeding,” Sandeman explained, “the venom would sicken the child, and depending on whether he had the antigens necessary to fight the poison, he would either die or live. Those who lived were initiated into the group and taught the Mujomeno ways.”
His face darkened and he sighed. “I was a fully participating member of the group’s activities. I was a renowned scientist and also acted as the librarian of the Mujomeno, one of the best scholars they had. But when my last sons were born, I became uneasy.”
“Sons? I thought you said the first two were killed,” Dean interjected, the first words he had said in a long while.
Sandeman nodded. “The first two were killed, but the third pregnancy resulted in twins. They shared the same birth, so according to our ways, I could not kill either, like I killed their mother after her duty was fulfilled.”
His blue gaze was unrepentant and the statement was uttered in a matter-of-fact manner that the Winchesters found repugnant. Their lips curled back in distaste. Dean’s hand clenched white around his gun.
The old man noticed their repulsed expressions. “At the time, I was a faithful believer of their customs. I loved my wife, but I had been schooled since I was very young to be loyal to my people. That soon changed, as you will hear in a minute.”
Sam shifted uneasily and the muscle in Dean’s jaw twitched. His hand itched to reach for his gun. But they said nothing and let the man talk.
“As I said,” continued Sandeman, “I was a scientist, so I had access to the equipment necessary to test their blood. They were fraternal twins. The first twin, Ames, would pass the test, but my younger, Carl Junior, would not. My son was going to die if I didn’t do anything about it. I thought that perhaps if I hid him, they might not find him, and as it turned out, that did work for a while.”
Sandeman glanced at the tense and impatient features of his two visitors. “But to return to my story, I tested both their blood. This was in 1988. I’d been working on a line of super-soldiers for the military, using the best parts of a variety of DNA to create the perfect soldier. The project was still in its early stages, but it made me think. I loved, love,” he corrected, “both my sons. Why did one have to die, poisoned, and with the permission of his own father?”
His voice increased in volume. “Why did anyone have to die? What was so special about the Mujomeno that they should be the only ones left once Ijerejo returned to rule the earth? Didn’t everyone else have the right to live?” By this time, his arms were raised to punctuate his questions and his face was turned up towards the heavens.
Dean rolled his eyes at Sam and whispered, “Glorified mad scientist, anyone?” The “mad scientist” referred to apparently didn’t hear, or didn’t care, as he continued detailing his plan.
“And that was the way I landed on the perfect way to resist the Mujomeno.” Sandeman smiled in grim satisfaction. “I would use my work to hide my research for the antigen DNA code to guard CJ from the venom. If I could get it to work on him, then it would work for everybody else on the earth. The whole world could potentially be saved from the ‘rain of death’ that Ijerejo prophesied would kill off everyone but his chosen.”
The old man leaned forward. “If I succeeded, I could save the world.”
DASPNDASPNDASPNDASPNDASPNDASPNDASPNDASPN
AN: So how was that mythology, huh? Could you tell where “real” Minoan mythology and facts left off and my ideas began? Could ya, huh? I did a bunch of fanfic research when I should have been doing homework research.
I found a Minoan-English dictionary with phonetic transcriptions of the symbols. I tried to stick to the original meanings but had to improvise sometimes.
“Po-ti-ni-a” is the name of a goddess, meaning “The Great Lady.”
“I-je-re-ja” actually means “priestess.” But it sounds like…something-plot stuff I can’t give away yet-and “-o” seems to make certain words masculine in Minoan, so…anyway (hint-hint).
“Di-we” is the name of a god, perhaps a version of “Zeus.”
“Ma-ka-wo” is “battle,” and “me-wi-jo” means “little in quantity” and “me-zo-e-mi” means “much in quantity.”
“Pa-de” is “god” and “wo-no” is “wine”-wine was very important in the Minoan culture, so borrowing from Christianity, I made wine symbolize blood. To my knowledge, that is not part of the Minoan culture, just to let you know.
Otherwise, bulls really were a big deal, as were snakes, and they did have a Mother Goddess who was also portrayed as a Snake Goddess, and there was also this young god who wasn’t as important but was still big. The eruption of Thera around 1600-1627 BC caused a lot of trouble in the Aegean area environmentally, which I suppose affected the political system (that’s what my paper was about). The Mycenaeans occupied the Palace at Knossos for about 300 years but then it burned down for some unknown reason (ooh, maybe it was supernatural, hehe).
I tweaked a couple of the DA ages a little, but just the ones that weren’t common knowledge, like when White and CJ were born. The only way I could think of so that both Ames and CJ would be alive was that they were twins and the cult didn’t have rules on how to deal with a fourth child.
Hiatus for a while-I’m just not feeling like continuing with this right now. For one thing, I just got thoroughly Jossed--it's called "Jossed," right? If what I planned got totally contradicted by Kripke? Bummer.
Chapter 9