"Hey, lovebirds, get up. The Old Man found something." "Old man" being an affectionate term for the elder member of the Order. Willow roughly shoved the pair to ensure they woke up.
At some point during the night, Nero's arms had become wrapped around Dante, and Dante, who was probably uncomfortable with his arm being pinned to his side by Nero, had put his arm on Nero's shoulder. What was once peaceful snoring coming from the two was now groans of discomfort, followed by exchanging looks of confusion and realization.
"Ugh... what time is it?" Nero rubbed his eyes in an attempt to wake himself. He would deal with his embarrassment later, right now he is too tired to care. Dante is pretty tired too, but he's usually tired when he first wakes up anyways because of his constantly changing sleep schedule.
"8 o'clock in the morning." Replied Willow.
"Why the hell are you waking me up this early?" He looked over at Willow with dark circles under his eyes. He was normally up by this time, but clearly somebody was a bit grumpy since he didn't go to bed on time. Peering around the room, most of the other members that had been helping them the night before had since relocated themselves out of the room, but some, including Jack, were still passed out on the other couches.
"C'mon, where's your spunk? Let's get moving, before the Old Man leaves without us. Or you can stay here and miss all the action, whatever you want to do."
"Action? What Action? I thought we were still looking through books?" Nero tossed the book he was reading before he had fallen asleep onto the floor.
"Were you not listening to me? He found something. He stayed up reading books and he's been going on about how he's found the key to the mystery or some shit like that. Probably just his old age finally catching up with him, but it's either believe him or continue reading these moldy books." Nero stood up reluctantly from the couch.
"So, believing him it is." Nero decided. Dante stood up from his spot as well. As he stretched out, his joints popped from finally being moved after hours of being in the same position. Nero turned his attention to Dante. "Speaking of old age..." He teased with a smirk. The prospect of doing something other than reading had made him forget that he's supposed to be tired and grumpy.
"Nah, I just wasn't able to move for the past few hours, thanks to a certain kid pinning me to the couch's arm rest." He knew bringing that up would quiet Nero, at least for now.
"...Well, we should get moving." Nero, predictably, no longer had an interest in teasing Dante anymore.
"He's probably already on his way to the cave-tunnel-thing. I guess we'll meet him at its entrance." With that, Willow left the building and headed towards the cave with the two devil hunters soon following behind him.
It didn't take them very long to reach the cave's entrance. The Old Man was standing beside the entrance, reading an old book that seemed to be extremely interesting to him. He didn't even notice the three men approaching.
"Hey, whatcha got there?" Nero was the first to speak up. His unexpected voice startled the man.
"Oh- yes- I should've figured you would be here by now. I found this book and.. it's... well, take a look yourself." The Old Man closed the book and handed it to Nero. The book even felt old. The cover of the book's title was in what Nero believed to be Latin.
"Any idea what it's titled?" Nero asked as he opened the book and began to flip through the pages.
"I think it says 'Techniques To Kill Evil Beings'. I'm no expert in Latin though, that's just what I was able to translate from a Latin dictionary. Basically, it's a book on how to kill demons."
"What makes you think this book is related to what we're trying to figure out then? There are no dead demons in there." Nero closed the book after determining it was useless. He offered it over to Dante, who took the book from Nero and started to flip through the pages himself.
"Go to the last few pages." Dante did as the Old Man said and flipped to the very back of the book. The left page was a rough drawing while the right was text. The drawing depicted a small group of people carrying torches and weapons. The people were cornering a demon into a hole in the ground. Dante looked over at the right page. The Old Man had circled and translated several words on the page, enough to understand what the text said. Dante pieced together the scattered English words as he read.
"To properly subdue the demon, you must first collect large amounts of sage and crushed frankincense. Obtain two bowls of freshly made holy water. Build a crypt below a church or other holy ground. The underground crypt will remove the demon's influences from the village and the presence of God in the grounds above the crypt will prevent the demon from escaping. Ensure that there are plenty of lit torches within the crypt. Demons thrive in the darkness and the light will keep them weak. Once the crypt is prepared, corner the demon into it. Place the bowls of holy water on either side of the demon to further weaken him once you have it in the crypt. Burning the sage will cleanse the air of the evil the demon produces. Scatter the frankincense around the crypt, the demon will not want to walk across it and escape. As the sage is being burned, a holy priest should recite the blessing mentioned in the previous passage. The blessing should be put on a crucifix or other holy item. Repeat the blessing onto as many objects as needed until the process is complete. Bury the blessed items into the ground surrounding the demon. This will bury his soul into the ground below, therefore separating his body from his spirit. If successful, the demon's body will turn to stone in reaction to the separation from his spirit. The demon is not yet dead, it is only in hibernation, awaiting on the return of its soul. Depending on the size and power of the demon, it may take several millenniums for the demon to die from deterioration. Because of that, it is not recommended that this technique be used on all demons. This should only be used if all other attempts at destroying it have failed."
"Was there a building over this area?" Dante continued to examine the page for anything he might've missed as he spoke.
"Yeah, but it wasn't a church like the passage says you need. It was somebody's house." The Old Man responded.
"All of the buildings here have been reused for centuries though." Nero spoke up. He and Willow had been standing on either side of Dante and had quietly been reading along with him.
"But there hasn't been any Christian churches here since before Sparda first ruled here, around two thousand years ago. Was Christianity even a thing back then?" Willow chimed in.
"Yeah, it was a thing. A new thing, but a thing." Nero thought to himself for a few seconds. "Do we even know when Sparda came along and named the town Fortuna? Maybe he came here after, like... 150 AD? By that time Christianity was pretty popular and I know he wasn't the founder of the town, so that must mean he just stumbled across a town and named it Fortuna and named himself the ruler of the town. Kind of a dick move on his part, though... but anyways, if that's what happened then there was probably at least one Christian church here." Willow gave Nero a sarcastic look of surprise.
"Well whaddayaknow. Nero is actually trying to help instead sitting on his ass until something exciting happens." Willow's sarcasm earned him an unamused look from Nero.
"I doubt we'll find any books on the history of the town before it was Fortuna." The Old Man mused.
Dante closed the book and handed it back over to the Old Man. "Looks like all we can do is go down there and mess with stuff until something happens then."
Nero looked at Dante with concern. "Until something happens? If this really is a crypt holding a powerful demon, why on earth would we want to go in there and possibly release it?"
"Well, if it really is that, and the demon is still alive, it's probably pretty weak. It shouldn't be too hard to take care of it."
The Old Man nodded in agreement with Dante. "He's right. Besides, the civilians know something's down there now. If we don't get rid of the problem, they might get curious and go snooping around in there. Which means we might get a ton of deaths on our hands if they accidentally release anything hiding in there, since we didn't take care of the problem before something happened."
"Let's get going then!" Willow quickly entered into the crypt. They hadn't gotten many calls to slay any demons lately, so he's gotten a bit restless from the lack of action, much like many of the Order members. Dante entered in next, followed by Nero, since the entrance was not wide enough for more than one person to enter at a time.. The Old Man stayed behind to ensure the area stayed secure and that no civilian's got near the entrance. The trio made their descent back down into the crypt for the second time, this time going through the effort of bringing their swords, just in case. Nothing in the tunnel or crypt had been disturbed, though the crypt's torches were still lit from the night before.
Willow sighed with relief. "Oh good, the torches are still lit. I would've felt stupid if we had come down here just to realize we can't see shit in the dark.."
Dante came into the crypt behind Willow. "That's what he's for." He gestured behind himself, towards Nero.
"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?"
"That's supposed to mean you have a built-in light." Dante chuckled to himself as he began the process of gathering the scattered sage, frankincense, and various amulets that became apparent after kicking around the dirt some to uncover them.
"You're just jealous."
"I dunno. Sounds like it might get annoying after a while. Does it have a 'turn off' switch when you want to sleep?" Dante gently picked up the two bowls of holy water that were beside the statue one at a time. He placed them in the corner farthest from the statue.
"Actually, I think it's controlled by emotions. The more powerful the feeling is, the brighter it is. But whenever I'm tired or feeling bad, it almost has no glow. Still trying to figure this thing out though."
"Either way, I'd think it'd be awesome if I had claws. Like, for whenever I have a REALLY itchy spot. I bet claws would feel so heavenly.." Willow chimed in. "But anyways, back to the matter at hand, in case you don't know," he spoke since he knew Nero didn't read what Dante had read "we're collecting all the amulets, sage, frankincense, and holy water. Take that stuff outta here, but don't take the amulets just yet. The book said something about how it's soul is in them, so while you two collect stuff I'll be doing the fun part of trying to figure out how to.. well, how to put its soul back into the body.. statue... thing." He sat down up against one of the walls and examined over the amulets as Dante and Nero find them. It took them a while, probably at least an hour but nobody thought to bring anything that would help them keep track of time, but eventually all of the sage, frankincense, and holy water had been taken out of the crypt and properly disposed of. They had found several dozen amulets buried all around the statue.
"Alright, everything's out. You figured it out yet?" Dante asked Willow as he walked back into the crypt, having just tossed the last of the items out, with Nero following behind him.
"Yeah, I think so." Willow gave the amulet he was holding a final once-over before looking up at the two devil hunters. "I think we just need to break them."
"You think? What if we break them all and we weren't supposed to?" Nero questioned.
"Well, breaking the object should free whatever it's concealing. But if it doesn't, then that just means we permanently sealed away a demon. So it doesn't really matter if we mess up. Though, if breaking the amulets sealed away the demon's soul forever, I would think whoever did this would've already broken them to make sure the demon can't leave." As he was speaking, Willow stood up and began placing the amulets in a line on the ground with space in between each amulet. "I think a good swing of a sword should break these." After aligning the amulets, Willow went to the first amulet in the line and readied himself and his sword.
"Are you sure about this? We're not going to get cursed or something?" Nero was obviously concerned for their own sake.
"If I didn't know any better, I'd think you're scared." Dante smirked, his accusation causing Nero to become visibly embarrassed, though he quickly tried to cover this up by scowling at him.
"Nah, nothing should happen. I saw this in a movie once and nothing happened to them." Willow lifted his sword into the air.
"You what-" Though, before Nero could intervene, Willow had struck the amulet with his sword as if his sword was a hammer. The previously shiny, flawless gold that covered the amulet split perfectly down the middle upon being struck. Everybody fell silent as they waited for something exciting to happen. To their amazement, absolutely nothing happened.
"What? Nothing? Aw man.. in the movie there was like this cool scene where some spirit appeared and it was really cool..."
"This isn't a movie, Willow." Nero rolled his eyes at him. "Well," he breathed in deeply "I guess there's nothing else to do but destroy the rest of 'em.." And so, they did. Each amulet was destroyed one at a time, with each one of them taking turns destroying the amulets.
"This is the last one.." Nero said a bit anxiously. He is not a fearful man, or a particularly superstitious man, and he has no issues with charging blindly into battle. But he would be lying if he said he didn't feel uneasy about the situation, though he would not be able to explain why he felt so. It was his turn to destroy the next, or rather last, amulet. "Hey, Dante, why don't you do the honors?" He tried to make his offer seem genuine, though he really just didn't want destroy the last one himself.
"Yeah yeah, I'll do it." Dante moved to take Nero's place in front of the amulet, since he had moved away from it as soon as Dante said he'd do it for him. Willow and Nero braced themselves for the worst as Dante put all his strength into hitting the amulet with his sword. When the sword made contact, there was a distinctive clinking sound as the amulet broke into two clean-cut pieces. As soon as the deed had been done, Dante lifted his sword back into the air, ready to fight whatever appeared. Though, the crypt was silent. Seconds ticked by, but there was still no movement or sound.
A full minute ticked by before anybody dared to say anything, not out of fear, but out of caution. "Well what the hell, all that for nothing?" Nero was both disappointed and annoyed. After the echoes of his voice dissipated, a rumbling and crackling sound came from the statue's direction. Immediately, everybody shifted their focus onto the statue.
The statue rumbles and crackled for several seconds, each one being more violent than the last, before actual cracks appeared on the statue. The cracks soon spread from their beginning and quickly covered the entire statue. In rapid succession, a few chunks of the statue began to crumble off of what laid underneath the hard outer layer before the entire outer layer fell off at once, revealing a very deteriorated, pathetic looking creature. It had jet black, cracked skin that looked extremely fragile, as though the skin itself would easily slough off of the body upon being touched. The creature retained the position it had while in statue form, that is its wings remained folded, the tail curled around its feet, it's eyes closed and the hands folded in a position similar to how a person would pray. They knew, though, that it was indeed alive and not still a statue since it's chest rose and fell periodically to indicate slow, deep breaths. It had black horns that resembled a Chamois' horns, though pointed more backwards instead of pointing straight up. One horn was intact, but the other was broken in half with the broken half just barely clinging to the other half. The general bulky frame of the demon looked like it was born and bred for power and strength, though after around a couple thousand years of inactivity its body had become starved and had resorted to cannibalizing its muscles to remain alive. Now, a delicate layer of skin covers the ever thinning layer of muscle that still clings to the demon's bones.
"What do we do? I think it's sleeping.." Nero whispered as quietly as he possibly could, as if he didn't want to wake the demon.
"Do demons even sleep?" Willow wondered out loud. With the sounds of voices filling the room, the demon opened its oval shaped eyes to reveal deep scarlet irises with humanoid pupils. They then lifted their swords into a battle-ready position as they waited for the demon to attack.
While I was researching demonic rituals, I found that, apparently, sage, frankincense, and holy amulets can be used to repel or subdue demons, according to legend. Of course, holy water can be used too, but everybody knows that.