Chapter XIV
Vergil contemplated the Tome of Rites, set on a table in the middle of the ruined hall. The book had an eerie, almost familiar energy and he could not completely ignore the tempting pull of the faint whisper emanating from it… or was it his ears were playing tricks on him? He could swear the book spoke but when he tried to actually focus on what was said, he heard absolutely nothing.
All the same, he didn't fall for its call. He wouldn't be opening the book, he was already contending with another power for command of his will. He paced away from it slowly, stopping by one of the once great windows in the once vaulted hall of the old fort, now laying in ruin, open to the sky, the ceiling long since fallen in but for one preserved edge. The sea beyond and below was an attractive and strangely calming sight for him. Facing Dante, earlier than he had wished, had been taxing.
He hated contemplating these things; they inevitably drew his mind to his own fall and the broken, fragmented memories of his long suffering and submission. He didn't remember everything – his mind had purged large parts of it in a bid to protect itself but what he did remember filled him with both dread and anger and the anger fed on itself and just grew in magnitude until it hurt. What he recalled the most was the sense of being a mere audience in his own body, barely able to influence what he did and how he acted. His memories of that time, too, were vague. He knew he and Dante had clashed, multiple times but the exact state of mind and emotion evaded him. He sensed that Dante had grown in power and skill since then. He recalled Nelo Angelo's frustration between considering him a worthy opponent and yet a loathsome cur.
Vergil had evaded his exact feelings towards Dante about the end of their deadly dance with almost religious zeal. Every time his mind strayed there, Vergil would rein it back, refuse to contemplate it. But it tugged at him, leaving him bitter and angry and yet… grateful? It didn't feel as though Dante had killed him – Nelo Angelo had fallen that day, not him. The twisted shadow of who he was had failed and he was free of Mundus' control, if only partially, through that false death.
But still.
Resentment's ugly claw remained hooked in him whenever he contemplated his foolish brother. A desire to clash with him and put the whelp in his place overtook him, leaving Vergil feeling deeply vexed. It was such a… human emotion, this desire for their twisted brotherly contact.
He hardly looked over at her approach. Tess had returned at last. He had no gratitude for her defending him during his scrap with Dante – it was a loathsome little necessity, something imposed on her by the Girdle that kept her bound to him. Dante's hesitation after shooting her had given him an opportunity to attack.
His experiences had left him with little time for honour.
"You're back," he observed flatly, as though addressing a piece of furniture.
"Ricardo is dead," she said dully.
Vergil had nothing much to say about that. "You've saved me the trouble then."
Ricardo's removal was convenient. He'd hated the weedy little alchemist from their first ever encounter and Vergil had spent the past year resenting the fact that he had depended on his concoctions and tinctures to strengthen himself. He was just another fool dancing on the Ragged Lady's string, fuelled by an obsession that even Vergil found irritating. He turned at last, facing her, noting the change in her demeanour. Up till now, Vergil had been keenly aware of her deep-seated but quiet resent; he had sensed, through the chain that ensured her obedience, the underlying defiance and resistance that had punctuated all of their interactions so far. She always stalled and interfered, exploiting every tiny loophole she could find, skirting the edge of his patience because he needed her.
And now it was gone.
She looked at him with eyes that had lost all spark and appetite for resistance and were simply reflections of quiet, resigned grief.
She is broken, he thought.
He found no reaction in himself to her state. She wasn't his problem, she was just the means to an end.
"There's work for you to finish," he told her emphatically. "And then we can be done with each other."
Still she didn't react, just looked right through him. "Yes, Master."
He flicked his hand towards the book. "The Tome of Rites contains a ritual known as the Movement of the World. You will find it, prepare it and perform it. You are to free me of Mundus' control."
She finally focused on him. "And what does your silent partner wish, Master?"
Vergil's brow quirked. "What was that?" he said quietly.
"You are not alone in this endeavour, Master" she said quietly. "Someone has guided you in all this because they want something too. What is it?"
Vergil was equally irritated and impressed. The Ragged Lady was exerting considerable powers to cloud her Deep Sight, and yet, here he had crystal clear evidence that it had utterly failed, speaking volumes about the extent of this young woman's powers of sight. He entertained the idea of exploiting them further but banished the thought quickly. He cared little for humans, and no power of their getting could change that.
He knew the Ragged Lady had decided to make her appearance even before he heard the soft rush of cloth, or her raspy chuckle. Her loathsome, vile presence made itself evident even before she appeared out of thin air, as was her habit.
"I am very impressed, my dear," she purred at Tess. "Your Deep Sight is almost as formidable as mine. Even my most potent arts have failed to confound it entirely."
At the sight of her, Tess' face lost all colour and her eyes widened with fear and surprise. The Ragged Lady seemed very amused at her reaction, chuckling delicately. She glided towards the witch, reaching out to caress her cheek like a doting aunt, causing the redhead to flinch backwards violently. The effect she had on the witch seemed to please the Ragged Lady, who smiled broadly.
"Do you know me my dear, that you would ask of me?" she inquired sweetly.
Tess was mute with shock, just staring and shivering faintly – not with fear, Vergil noticed. She was angry. Her hands opened and closed, like a cat sharpening its claws, in impotent anger. If the redhead had her freedom, he contemplated, she would've very likely attacked the Ragged Lady.
The Ragged Lady chuckled at her silence. "What is it, my dear? Cat got your tongue, as they say?"
"You are the Ragged Lady," Tess said through clenched teeth.
"So glad you know me, dear. What I want is to be free as well. Free from a curse."
Vergil jerked his arm to the side. "Enough of this!" he rumbled. "Let's be done with this charade. She will perform the ritual for us, now."
"Why yes, she shall," the Ragged Lady purred, accosting Tess, guiding her towards the table. "Don't worry, my dear. I will guide you right through it…"
Tess shrugged her away with a violent flinch that the Ragged Lady avoided all too languidly. She loomed over Tess as the girl stumbled to the table and opened the book. Tess fumbled with the pages and suddenly tried to back away, wincing and shrugging in evident pain – her resistance was back, more out of fear than resent, and the Girdle punished her.
"Yes, the book is potent, isn't it?" the Ragged Lady purred. "Don't fear it, dear."
Vergil confessed to himself that he found the Ragged Lady's barely restrained fixation with the girl revolting. He could see the wraith-like woman's bony fingers twitch with anticipation, clearly imagining strangling the witch with her own hands. So much barely concealed, unashamed hate, it was utterly pathetic.
Tess turned yet another page and stopped. Studying the page, her face betrayed the abject horror of its contents.
"There… The Movement of the World," the Ragged Lady purred. "Nothing is beyond its scope. Done correctly, it affords means to achieve anything. Anything. The world, time and space bend to your will."
Tess did not share her enthusiasm. She stared right at Vergil, her brows knitted together harshly.
"What is it?" he asked harshly.
"I have to warn you, Master," she said. "This ritual calls upon tremendous, uncontrollable powers. It may fail."
The Ragged Lady scoffed angrily. "It won't," she snapped. "You will succeed. I have foreseen this."
Tess ignored her, fixing on Vergil. "You are meddling with wild, unpredictable powers, Master. You cannot expect to tame them as you do the power of demons. They will not yield. Not to me, not to her and not to you. If it fails, we will all perish."
Vergil's scowl deepened. "Then stop stalling. Begin."
Tess' gaze was calm once more, looking down at the page with quiet resignation. "Yes, Master."
"I will guide you through the construction of the necessary circles," the Ragged Lady said. "Be patient, Vergil."
He watched Tess pick up the book and study it, the Ragged Lady whispering to her instructions as she used her innate gift with fire to begin tracing the signs. He watched the girl work reluctantly under the Ragged Lady's instruction, creating ever greater circles and tracing them with runes that were foreign to him. He recognized them as signs of great potency, however, almost by instinct. The site of the ritual was massive, almost twenty feet across in every side, with a myriad of circles within circles, breaking between them and placed so they abutted others to form shapes, containing seemingly endless signs and symbols, some demonic, some wiccan and some which were entirely foreign to him.
She faltered, a few times, her legs seeing unable to hold her. The Ragged Lady would intervene, grasping her arm commanding the fire to hold her steady without a word.
The book was having an effect on her. He could still feel its tug and he saw the Ragged Lady sometimes caress the damnable thing while Tess still held it, almost as though it were a child. He sneered at her silently, watching her dote on this like a child awaiting to tear open a gift. He was simply anticipating Dante's arrival. Despite the Ragged Lady's care to hide their activities, he didn't doubt that Dante would show up.
Their confrontations always seemed fated. Why should this prove to be any different?
He had never questioned why they clashed. Dante was weak, deliberately allowing gaping openings in his defences with his foolish charade of humanity. Why would he bother? They weren't human. Neither were they demons. They were Sparda's sons and they carried a legacy, a promise of power far greater than either species, and yet, Dante forever resisted. He would never understand his sibling. Dante simply infuriated him.
"How much longer," he demanded impatiently.
"We are nearly complete," the Ragged Lady purred.
When it was finally done, Tess had to stop and lean against the table to catch her breath. Vergil eyed the expanse of symbols strewn across the stone floor. It was massive. He often wondered why wiccan rituals required such a complexity of circles – this one was on a scale he had not yet imagined. He understood that every circle in a ritual was bound to the invocation and control of at least one of the powers involved. What Tess had just completed had more circles, runes and symbols than anything he'd seen before and he quietly wondered whether the witch could really harness this much power.
Certainly, the strain should be enough to kill her, mortal as she was, once the ritual concluded. But that certainly wasn't his problem.
The book's call seemed to latch onto these thoughts, his mind and the book's whispers turning to ponder on how such a power might be harnessed. He growled quietly, shaking it from his mind. Mundus' hold on him was making his focus waver and teeter about like a ship in a storm.
Tess stood straight, surveying the ritual site with a resigned, distant expression. It was impossible to discern whether she was afraid or concerned, and honestly he didn't care in the slightest. He watched the Ragged Lady; even now, so close to their goal, Vergil hated that he couldn't understand her agenda. This fixation of hers with the girl and the idea of mere vengeance… could it really be that simple? Once free of the curse weighing down on her, what would the creature do? He would have to keep a close watch on her, lest she turn out to be like Arkham, a sycophant and grasping thief. He entertained the idea of ridding himself of her regardless of the outcome. She was too dangerous to him to allow her to live.
"Are you prepared, Vergil?" Tess asked him suddenly, breaking his train of thought.
He moved his gaze on her as she stood in the middle of the circles, holding the book open and looking back at him with the strangest gaze, unlike anything he had seen on her face before.
"Once this ritual begins, nothing can stop it. There is no backing out," she said. "If… you feel the hold of whatever torments you during the ritual, there is no telling what it will do to you."
The Ragged Lady glided past her. "He will be well," she said flatly.
Vergil narrowed his eyes at the witches, glance flicking briefly between them. The Ragged Lady was so eager to get it over with, yet Tess hesitated despite her resignation. He stepped forward, into the circle that the Ragged Lady instructed him to stand in while the site was being formed. She moved smoothly to her own.
"Begin," he told Tess.
Tess shut her eyes, taking a deep breath and steeling herself. She stared at the book and began to recite the first of many incantations, thread-like, stringy words. From the very first stanza, the power they carried started to thrum in the open space, the circles and symbols started to react. She gripped the book tighter and the shrug of her shoulders spoke of anxiety and fear. The circles began to resonate with power – or rather, powers. Vergil could feel them building up, gathering like the clouds of a storm. A collision of worlds was imminent and he was to be at the centre of it.
The circles started to blaze with palpable, visible power, licking up like flames and a gauzy smoke that lingered and hovered. It looked like dye spreading in water, like sheets of the finest, diaphanous material, like cobwebs and liquid light. It was there and not there, visible to his demonic sense but half-hidden to his other senses. The roofless hall shuddered faintly.
Then suddenly a new force made its appearance. It skirted the circles hesitantly, like a wild animal might prowl around the fire of a hunting party. Then it surged, diving into the circles with them as though nothing could stop it. Vergil felt himself go rigid and unable to move. The Ragged Lady shrieked in indignation.
"No!" she said. "Something is not right! What have you done, child?! Who dares…?!"
She was struck dumb as both of them were fairly pinned to the ground of their circles by the ritual's powers, even as this foreign presence grew. Vergil felt it pressing against him. Death. This entity was neither demonic, nor wiccan. It was the awful presence of death and it made Vergil's skin crawl against his will. He had brushed up against this cold, gripping sensation once and it had marked him. Now he felt it even more keenly and his resolve… wavered for a moment before he grit his teeth.
He would not be swayed!
XXXXXX
Dante didn't need a map to find the ruined castle. For a while there had been a veritable beacon of gathering energies to guide him. He could feel the ebb of demonic energy being channelled toward it by the smaller gates. All he really had to do was follow.
He saw it as he moved through overgrown ruins of a once prosperous town, before the occupants had fled the horror of the Black Death. The low wall that had crumbled in places from time and neglect, hid little of the once imposing structure that this fortified outpost must have been. This was no decorative edifice like the castle of Fortuna, this beast had been built to withstand war, weather and time, a hulking mass of stone that made no attempts at decorative aesthetics beyond what hewn stone could achieve before losing its strength.
Clouds had swept the sky all day, but now, they seemed to darken, slowly swelling overhead, sign enough that rain was either imminent, or that this was indeed the place where all that tightly-wound tension that plaguing Amaro the entire day was about to break. The air was electrified with the thrum of gathering powers. Dante was familiar with this sensation of powers closing in, he'd felt it before time and time again.
There was nothing to stop him; the wall that the castle's defenders could once count upon to protect them was no impediment. There was no gate left to close, Dante simply darted through the opening in the wall, where it had once stood, continuing uphill toward the ruin with haste. He stopped before the structure itself, both to catch his breath and to rein his warring emotions into check. All the same, his attempt was undermined by the unmistakable feeling that a Gate was opening, very near him. And it felt like a big one, bigger even than Fortuna's. Already the area was rumbling and starting to acquire that distinct feeling of being tainted.
Time had run out.
He made for the structure itself, noticing the ruined walls and trying to guess where they were. Crossing a ruined vestibule into an open courtyard, he glanced at the large tree inhabiting it. Its leaves were shrivelling and starting to wilt before his very eyes. Something was very wrong and even as he dove towards where the sensation was strongest, he sensed Vergil in the maelstrom of huge amounts of power gathering. He couldn't place these powers and it concerned him. They almost felt like demonic but then again not, vaguely familiar and yet alien.
They flowed like water around the place, continuing to get stronger, like a river was feeding into a brook and turning it into a torrent.
His skin was prickling with the sensations of it and his senses grew confused. Where was it even coming from?! This ruin felt like closing in until he caught sight of it, the eerie light breaching through the cracks and seams of the stonework. The wall reached up high but the room beyond had no roof.
He took a deep breath and with a quick jump, kicking off a column opposite it, he vaulted over the wall. He wanted to have a calm head and maybe even a little witticism ready for whatever he was going to confront and yet he failed miserably.
He stood just outside a truly massive ritual site that spanned nearly the entire roofless great hall. The energies present hit him in the face like a hammer and cobwebs of them wrapped around him, his coat billowing as air rushed inwards towards the centre, as if the ritual itself was trying to devour everything into itself. The ancient stones were alight with the glow coming from the circles on the floor, a fluctuating lightshow that cast a series of eldritch shadows over the walls.
The room shuddered, revolted or terrified of whatever was happening within its walls. Everything was rumbling faintly, giving Dante the unsettling sensation that the room was somehow alive.
He was rooted on the spot, confused at the sensation of demonic powers mingling with the forces that only wiccans knew how to invoke – there was so much of it all crammed in that room that he felt strangely uneasy.
And he wasn't alone. Vergil stood within one circle and famously, he looked petrified. The practiced mask of cold detachment Vergil always seemed to cultivate had apparently failed him. His face was locked in genuine surprise – there was the slight sag of the jaw and the wide, staring eyes. Even the inky blackness of his gaze couldn't hide his bewilderment. On the opposite end of the circles a vaguely wraith-like hooded figure, wreathed in ruined dark robes, was crumbled on the ground with her arms up, making a cracked noise of confusion and babbling in some language Dante could not hope to decipher. It seemed that neither of them had anticipated the sheer magnitude of the ritual.
He swept the hall for Tess. A forgotten feeling, the proverbial heart jumping into his throat, gripped him as he finally noticed her, in the heart of this ordeal, wrapped in gauzy energies that raged about her. She stood but barely in the middle of the circles, holding the Tome in her shaking hands. Her head was tossed back and her expression fixed in shock, her mouth half-open in a silent scream.
Dante felt a shiver run down his spine. There it was, again, that vague touch of death, the same that he had felt when Regina's revenant grabbed him. Death brushing against him and it was worse this time. Something was here and it was examining him. Then it dove away and he sensed rather than saw it drift around Tess vaguely.
This power gathering was doing something to her. Her knees were failing her and her skin was deathly pale, drenched in perspiration but something held her up, kept her awake and continuing this ritual. He nearly dove into the circles to get to her – but even his demonic side balked at the idea. Far from an expert on wiccan rituals, his instincts alone screamed that if he barged into the circles now, the ritual would be interrupted, exacting a very dear price on everyone present. No, he couldn't risk it. He couldn't even call out to her; any break in her concentration might doom her. He felt like screaming at his own helplessness.
His presence finally got Vergil to tear his eyes from the witch and the two of them exchanged a long look. Dante saw the race of emotions through his brother's face and knew that in a way his face betrayed the same. Confusion reigned supreme, but also anger of a different sort. Both reached for their blades vaguely but neither drew sword. Their arms were just so heavy and stiff.
"Vergil!" he barked. "What the fuck are you doing?!"
"You shouldn't have come here, Dante!" Vergil spat back.
That's all they spoke to each other before everything simply seemed to stop. Time slowed to a crawl and sound wound down to a watery undercurrent of noise. The dead thing that had been coursing around finally surged and spun itself into a mass of gauzy material like floating cloth. It enveloped Tess who gasped, dropping the book to her feet with a thump. Her arms fell to her sides and her head hung low. She stood still, yet was no longer there.
But something else was.