Yay, a quick update for this 'fic :D Are you guys as excited as I am?! Well, today is my birthday as well, so maybe I'm just automatically more excited than anyone else…(you know what would make for a great present? REVIEWS! Haha I know…lame…)

Thank you to the reviewers!:

destructo888: Don't worry...VxL is coming up more later on, I just wanted to backtrack a bit and make it a bit more realistic/true to their characters. :)

pangapod

IVIaedhros: Yes, I agree, I've been thinking about outlining these chapters...just because I'll write a ton and it'll come up ALOT shorter than I originally thought. Thank you for the suggestion.

Mistress of Destruction: Vergil is definitely working over-time...yes, we'll see how long that lasts :)

Ethear

Moonlight Shadow Huntress

I hope you guys enjoy this chapter, and stay tuned for the next one soon!

If his eyes were not such a piercing blue, he would be her father in the flesh.

Lady bit back the thought, yet it betrayed her in all its horrific revelations—

The sight of the pristine body marred sickly red in its own blood, the great, shuddering breaths of compressing lungs as it swayed backwards in a wide, convulsing arc to the Earth below…

The rolling cerulean eyes shot red as he quivered and twitched, the late undulations of a body expired, so fleetingly warm in her trembling arms, so much like her mother's—

And then the scream of defiance, the agonizing pain in that demonic cry as he ripped himself from death, currents of rage powering his veins, stronger than any wound…

And Vergil fled.

Her father fled.

Like a bastard.

"Bastard."

Her whispering accusation was no accident. The words rang hollow in the Tower, dying against the churning scream of the waters surrounding them—yet Vergil's broad back arched and his once-calm pace of walking slowed to a frozen silence yet again. He was inhuman beneath the black shadows of the cavern, its twisting shapes casting a sickly, monstrous sheen on his skin. The huntress found herself clenching her jaw in anticipation as the Devil whipped himself around to face her, his eyes a scythe in the nearly solid blackness. Eyes that seemed to hold no end; strange, empty holes of eyes, as if they had been cut and gutted of all emotion but for vast nothingness.

And then his lips twitched into an almost frightening snarl.

"What did you say, girl?"

It was a smooth hiss that filled her body with chills; she kept her stance, her gaze steady. Kalina Ann could have been completely broken at her side, he could stick her through like a skewer—but she didn't care. For a moment this man was Arkham. For a moment, she utterly despised him.

"You're a bastard, Vergil. Destroying your own family like the demon you are, putting me up for a sacrifice, and for what? For a family toy—"

She had walked towards him in her fervor, had lost herself in the sudden, terrible rage. Bringing a hand out to touch the amulet lying like a bloody wound against his bare chest, Lady's words were cut off as cold metal sliced through the air and met her throat in a deadly kiss. The huntress fought the gasp that flew from her lips with a glare of defiance at Vergil's stony, stoic face, Yamato's sharp edge close to slicing her throat into bloody pieces.

"You are merely a human woman. You understand nothing of my affairs! This isn't just some toy; it's of more worth than you'll ever be, wench."

His words dropped with acid, with such burning revulsion Lady found herself snarling, her body tensed yet seething with hostility. Logic gnawed at the brim of her mind, insisted she keep herself alive long enough to complete her goal, to follow through with her newly concocted plan—yet the blood cried out in her veins, and she found herself struggling to push forward, the blade cutting against her flesh, the throbbing in her throat and the feeling of her own cold blood against Yamato's hungry silver tongue making her brain spin—

Yamato hissed as it pulled away. Lady's fingers shot to the liquid trickling down her throat in thin lines, and Vergil loomed above her, his face contorted into a savage leer.

"What do you want, Vergil?!"

She demanded, the red blood soaking her gloves as she spoke, her body still so dangerously close to his,

"What do you want with this Tower, with this amulet, with my blood?! Tell me! Tell me and I'll never speak again! Tell me and I'll happily carry through this pact!"

Her voice was so feeble—so sickeningly vulnerable and desperate, even to her. Vergil's hard gaze faltered; he turned away from her again, a soft, vicious chuckle rippling from his lips as he replied,

"It doesn't matter. Either way, you'll be dead in the end."

Her body was frigid as the reality broke the surface. The tome was heavy and overwhelming in her hands; so ironic that she was traveling to death itself. For a strange moment, angry tears pricked the corners of her eyes and words became strangled in her throat; a throat that would be useless in hours, breaths that could cease in a day of breathing.

And it was inevitable—she, the mortal fool, to suffer, to sacrifice, to die.

"Vergil."

The word felt like a plea; for what, she did not know, she did not care to know. Yet when the Son of Sparda turned his head again with that same, dead stare, she saw her sentencing.

"You are nothing but a tool to me."

The words stung her more than Yamato could have dreamt; Kalina Ann lay in her grip, her trembling hold as she wordlessly followed—her fingers aching to pull, dying to hurt this Satan as he had harmed her. The cavern was slower, suspended in free-fall; the waters seemed sluggish and rigid as they rose in low crests to spill from the rocky basin above, waterfalls pale as ice, trembling fingers pale like death.

No matter how much she resisted, she would die. No matter if she survived the Pact, survived Arkham…she would die, shrivel and wither of guilt, decay alone in this Tower, collapsed and buried beneath the ruins And so she was a toy in the Devil's eyes. A bartered sacrifice; a lamb for slaughter. All the better to slake his thirst.

His power.

They were descending across wide slopes of stone, jagged earth rising unexpectedly to devour them in the dark underbelly of the ground. So many raging, foaming waters shouted seizures in her ringing ears; the thick brown earth above their heads packed with maggots and the tarnished white of forgotten bones. She became painfully aware of the biting cold of the underground chasms, the churning waters that nipped her skin and drenched her blood in frost as if she were air.

Like you're already gone, a part of this earth…a grain of dust.

Vergil seemed to walk forever across the dancing shadows that embraced his tall body, that clung to him in black resplendence; the strangely empty halls that scooped low over their scalps, seemed to push their arched bodies inward to compress them as they passed. Her breath clung to frost, white and fleeting in the dark air. And then a flash of silver light shone across the caverns, and they stood before a door, flanked by the roar of waters never satisfied.

"Almost there, then."

The anticipation brought bile to her throat. What a fool she was, to think him anything like a human in his endeavors, as merciful or merely detached. The gleeful edge in his tone was that of one whose Christmas had come early, and as his white hands gripped the stone length of the doorway, Lady saw his gaze gleam with pure greed.

Their Pact would end soon.

And with it, her life.

In the depths of the chasm, the door gleamed against hard rock like an oasis in primal desert, drawing the two irresistibly toward its magnetic pull. Vergil's gaze was hungry, bestial, sweeping gluttonously over every miniscule detail of the elaborately carved doorway, depicting a woman's figure with a curiously hollow recess in the center, presumably some sort of keyhole needing to be unlocked. Lady eyed the doorway critically and felt a twinge of anxiousness at realizing they had to look for the damned key amidst the land creeping with more of those Enigmas they had so recently encountered.

Perhaps that would have been a better death.

But no, she couldn't go that way. She would have rather died valiantly, having completed her goal, than only halfway through her journey into Hell itself. Dark, sinister humor filled her brain at the very thought of her "journey," almost the carbon copy of the "Divine Comedy," led by Vergil into the dark depths…it was almost funny, almost bitterly so. She watched the Devil eye the door once more before his face twisted into a snarl and he pounded against the hard rock with a clenched fist,

"It seems we must find the key before going any further," He said in a smooth, surprisingly detached tone of voice, gazing straight into the rock rather than at Lady herself, "This Tower is quite fond of its secrets."

The Devil was not speaking to her; she could feel it, could feel it in the way he kept his head resolutely forward, restrained his gaze from averting towards her in any way, and the silent agitation that had built up within her bones was grating against her innards again with ferocious intensity, ready to tear her apart. Yet she found herself gritting her teeth beneath tightly pursed lips and whipping around in the opposite direction, walking carefully about the uneven ground, feeling the dampness of the earth even through her thickly soled boots.

A distant memory emerged from nowhere, as if it had floated from the river itself; an older time, when she was still called Mary, when her hair was in pigtails, gazing out at the calm sea, digging her toes into the sand, chubby legs against her father's back as he threw them both into the waters, laughing and splashing one another with the sea salt spray, her mother gazing fondly out at the both of them from the sand, as if it were a moment she could never forget…

Enough of that crap, Lady. You need to concentrate.

To herself, she nodded, the distinctive smell of the waters wafting before her nose like a haunting requiem. Lady knew the Tower was not so cryptic as to hide its keys behind complex puzzles or intricate traps. Her mind worked viciously as she gazed up towards the path they had descended, wondering where exactly that particular key lay hidden…

"I think it's back in one of the rooms we've passed," She said quietly, and Vergil's footsteps immediately resounded against the solid stone ground as he propelled himself with inhuman speed through the hall, a blur against her vision.

She followed, hugging the blue coat that she was suddenly overwhelmingly repulsed by, the cold nipping at her already frigid body as she kept herself in tow of the quick-footed Devil. Sure enough, after traversing through the thick gray caverns they had originally rushed through, the gleam of something elaborate in the near distance caught her eye.

"It's…it's there!" She gasped, astonished at how quickly they had come across what Lady presumed to be the key, standing out sharply like a precious stone against the storeroom which held it, caked and smothered with ages of dust and grime.

Without hesitation, Vergil lunged forward to grab the fist-sized, blood-red jewel between his fingers –and, just as he did so, a scream pierced the air, sending an unexpected chill down Lady's spine.

"Company," The Devil stated with an air of cool calmness, unsheathing Yamato with a hiss of metal against sheath.

Lady willed herself to glance upwards at the descending, huge masses; two colossal spiders, their bodies appearing crafted of thick slime rather than solid skin, their eight legs scuttling and scraping the air even as they fell in rapid succession on their white trail of webbing, eager to pierce through their flesh. The hundreds of bulbous eyes were focused on the two of them, magnifying their faces with the dead, black, glossy stares, the slime-caked mouths snapping together in eager hunger with their elongated pincers, black tongues wagging from their slippery orifices. They scuttled forward, hairy, slimy bodies coming threateningly close towards the two. Yet Vergil seemed relatively unfazed, his brow furrowed, clenching the Ambrosia in one hand, Yamato in the other.

"I'll destroy you both," He hissed with sudden brutality toward the two Arachnids, and Lady couldn't help but watch him with a spark of curiosity, "Get ready to die!"

Before she could blink, the white-haired devil rushed forward and shot Yamato forward like a javelin; it sank into the nearest eye of the first spider, the Arachnid raising its front legs and uttering a piercing scream of pain as the devil shot for Yamato and, jumping up towards its slick, hairy body, pulled the blade out and downwards in a sloping arc with such force the blade was shooting downwards to carve the Arachnid's face like a pumpkin, blood bursting from its shattered face with disgusting ease.

Lady pulled herself away from the second Arachnid just as it reached for her with a long, flailing limb; she lobbed a grenade straight into the leering face, the wide-opened mouth, jumping backwards with a sharp twist of her body as rock and debris were lifted forcefully from the ground with the impact of the explosion, filling sparks and bursts of violent red and gold into the smoky air. The Arachnids' piercing wails echoed throughout the air, yet Lady was on her heels, her knees crouched, anticipating the gigantic spider's return; and it did not fail to disappoint, its face bloodied and pitch-black, surging forward with Satanic strength straight for her once again.

Behind her, Vergil was dodging the Arachnid's swift attempts at coming into contact with his body with its spindly limbs, hacking at every appendage the spider struggled to touch him with, until it screamed in sheer agitation, the ebony blood spewing like rain through the air. The devil leapt upwards and delivered a blow with his blade against the spider's torso, raising it in a swift, heavy arc, and the Arachnid's screams intensified as the ugly gash formed to separate its flesh from its innards. Kalina Ann thrust its long, curved blade into her own Arachnid opponent's face, for a moment forgetting the flailing limbs that swept downwards in an effort to crush her—she swiveled to the side just as four of the eight appendages shot downwards to pummel the ground that had just been beneath her feet. With a determined cry she pulled herself backwards and lobbed another grenade for its flailing body—the Arachnid seemed to sense it, pummeling forward at an alarming pace just as it connected with its flesh, the upper half of its body caught within the explosion of shrapnel and debris, covered in trickling ebony blood as the smoke quickly receded.

And yet it still hadn't died.

Her eyebrows knit in frustration as the bloodied Arachnid rushed forwards again, yet she was not anticipating its sudden change in plans as it launched its sticky web straight for her. It was fast, shooting forward within the blink of an eye; the thick, sticky rope-like substance pooling across her feet and enveloping her ankles in solidity just as she was about to jump away. It was dragging her backwards, her stomach slamming against the ground, pulling her towards its drooling, shrieking orifice as Lady clung to Kalina Ann and found her own legs flailing in protest yet ultimately failing to fight back.

Her mind was panicked for an instant before a quick spark of a plan shot through her mind; and she stopped struggling to merely allow herself to be pulled forward, straight for the Arachnid's mouth.

A grunt and cry behind her; Vergil was fighting valiantly, his own opponent coated in its own blood, limping on half-lobbed away limbs, maw snapping viciously for the Devil that shot past its body again and again in quick blurs to stab its legs, backside, eyes just when he had been standing in another spot. It was a time-consuming tactic, yet it confused the spider; whenever it would shoot forward webbing in frustration, it would come up short, hesitate, as Vergil would take the chance and pummel its huge body with few yet devastating blows.

Lady was being pulled upwards by the web which suddenly snaked across her ankles and solidified about her knees like cement; she withheld a gasp as the webbing crept up with horrific quickness towards her thighs. She was dangling in the air as easily as a rag doll, directly facing the glob-like black eyes of the gigantic spider, a few of the many gouged and bloodied, each one reflecting her hostile face in a unanimous leer of bloodlust, and the webbing was spreading across to her hips, Kalina Ann barely dangling in her arm, as it opened its wide mouth, saliva dribbling down its front, incisors protruding to snap at her, eight limbs shoving her forward with brute, rapid force until its first incisor barely penetrated her leg—

And then it screamed in utter pain as Kalina Ann's blade came protruding through its gums.

With a sickening, lurching snap, the blade came free of the Arachnid's mouth, having cut a line straight through its maw, now dribbling with thick black blood and pus down its body, and she was falling, the webbing loosening from her legs, falling at an erratically quick pace towards the ground, yet just before she would impact the earth she stretched out an arm with all her strength and flung it for the screaming, ripped mouth of the spider—

Lobbing a grenade straight into its wide maw.

The Arachnid shrieked like a banshee as it imploded; its body seemed to collapse in on itself, the limbs retracting, shuddering, falling into withered stems beneath its huge form, the eyes, wide and bulbous, seeming to shatter in their sockets in bursts of black, spewing liquid, wide holes tearing throughout the skin as if it were made of paper, its entire body spewing blood and deflating like a screaming balloon. It finally sank to the ground, its smoking carcass spread out across nearly half the storeroom floor. Lady's fingers worked to pry the last of the webbing from her boots, her already wounded thigh aching with the pressure of the fall and the battle, and she found the thick makeshift tourniquet to be reddened with blood.

That was the least of her worries, however. Lady had other plans in mind as she turned to watch the second Arachnid falling like a stone to Vergil's blade, its body punctured in innumerable amounts, a pincushion to the viciously gleaming Yamato at the devil's side. It had been an easy task for him; time-consuming, yet ultimately effortless. The huntress heaved Kalina Ann across her shoulder and pushed the thick tendrils of white web behind her with the heel of her boot, walking towards the half-devil with a sudden wave of stoicism and, inevitably, disgust.

Vergil was slightly hunched over, his blade lying resolutely at his side, cradling the gleaming Ambrosia in his hands like a baby. His eyes were glazed with nothing less than eager lust as he stroked its sleek, glittering body, and her innards felt just as punctured as the spider lying dead before her. He stepped over the Arachnid's carcass with ease, as if it had never existed to guard the Ambrosia, and Lady's mind was filled with the image of herself, lying crooked and lifeless at his feet, as he stepped over her body with ease to unleash his Hell and fulfill his selfish desires…

No. That wasn't going to happen.

Her fist clenched against her side, kept resolutely from the devil's view, yet she followed him as always; silent and brooding.

She wasn't going to let it happen.

The caverns seemed illuminated with the Devil's glee; Vergil's eyes were uncharacteristically bright, yet illuminated by what could only be maniacal, malicious excitement, the blue flames eager to devour what lay beyond the locked doorway they were standing before. Lady couldn't concentrate; her mind was a blank slate, registering only the rippling of the waters, the fierce roar of the current, the sheer power of the river nearby that jutted into the stillness of dead lakes beyond.

"Yes," Vergil was gasping, an unconscious cry that leapt from his excited lips, never meant for Lady's ears.

The Ambrosia was settling into the lock; its gleaming brilliance cast a ruby sheen across the girth of the doorway, momentarily coloring the chalk-white stone with a fiery red glow. Slowly, upon its ancient, enchanted hinges, the doorway began to creak and groan open, its wraith-like procession an act of submission to the anxious key holder that awaited what lay within.

She grabbed Kalina Ann and felt its weight bear down upon her body like heavy lead. Lady's palms were sweating; the smell of the water was almost overbearing.

The white-haired Devil pulled Yamato to his side, watching the abysmal darkness seep through the exposed portions of the doorway, eagerly waiting to enter its depths, his feet shifting forward, body tensed and poised.

She inched away, her feet digging into the stone as it gradually shifted to graying sand against the riverbank, the screaming stream. Lady looked down at the body of water, Kalina Ann burning into her fingertips.

The waters were chaotic, gurgling beneath her boot with a rapid downstream current that could propel anything at rapid speed with almost supernatural force. She cocked her head and pushed a few pebbles into the water with the toe of her boot—they were swept away immediately, as if they had never touched the rippling surface.

"Just let me know one thing."

Her voice was soft, yet it was surprisingly forceful—it echoed across the vast underground chasm as if she were screaming. Vergil turned with an air of cool apathy to mask impatience, his eyes bordering cruel carelessness as they hovered near where she stood,

"Yes?"

Lady clenched her fists, her left squeezing Kalina Ann's sleek body in a death grip, fingers trembling beneath their gloves. She bit her lip and turned around to face him, then, seeming to catch the Devil by surprise with her sudden shift in movement as their eyes forcibly met,

"As long as I follow…I can kill Arkham, in the end? I'll be alive for it?"

A dark shadow seemed to stir before his expressionless face, and she knew.

"Of course," Vergil said easily, piercing eyes meeting her own as if to somehow validate his words.

Yet Lady merely smiled, shaking her head, her eyes softening into sadness.

"Liar."

Before Vergil could fathom what was happening, Lady had lobbed a grenade straight for him—cursing, his eyes widening in stunned shock, he pulled himself to the side just as it exploded in a burst of shrapnel and smoke nearby. It had been a weak grenade, and horribly thrown; yet in those milliseconds as the smoke began to clear and dissipate, he realized that had been exactly as planned.

Lady was near the edge of the river, her arms outstretched, her body poised—her eyes met his for an instant before she began to fall backwards.

Vergil's mouth opened; he found himself pummeling forward on the balls of his feet, straight for the foolish, stupid girl—

And then she was gone.