A/N: Hoo… Okay so moving into a house is a lot of work… My partner and I just repainted and now need to put trim back up but I can't wait to feel like I actually live there instead of my belongings just tossed willy nilly everywhere…
Disclaimer: I'm not sure what I own right now, but it's sure as hell not these titles
Come On
Nero had a sinking feeling in his gut. They were standing before another door, yet another goddamned door. Every time they stood before a door like this there was something large and horrifying on the other side, at least that's what it seemed like to the partial devil after having spent what felt like years in the depths of the dungeons. They were both certain that they were coming up on the end of the dungeons, but there was something about this particular door that made Nero hesitant to open it. He glanced over at Katherine who's eyes were set in a determined glare at the vast metal door before them. The devil hunter heaved a heavy sigh and was about to speak up, to ask if she was ready to go into the room when there was the faint sound of crying beyond the door.
"What was that?" he asked, feeling the hair on the back of his neck rise. That sounded like a baby crying, why was there a baby crying this deep into the dungeons?
"I… I don't know." Katherine said, her expression shifting into concern as the sound reached her ears as well. They both paused, just listening for several breaths, the sound ceased and didn't return. Nero looked over at his partner again, watching her take a deep breath.
"Let's go." she said, not meeting his eyes, instead staring at the door ahead. Nero nodded slowly and put his weight behind the door, ancient hinges ever so slowly creaking open. Beyond the door in a room predominantly filled with a single altar stood a lone woman. She was tall, extremely so, but they'd both come to expect that with those they found in the dungeons. The same could be said for her milky pale skin but she was the first one who was wearing more than beat up rags or armor. Her dress was elegant, old but beautiful, and clearly displayed her pregnant belly. She turned toward them, eyes as dark as the night sky and her hand clasped at her chest. A closer look showed that they weren't simply clasped there in some sort of prayer but bound together at the wrists. She didn't move immediately, perhaps simply curious of the strangers that had entered what appeared to be a place of worship.
Nero felt any and all fight leave him. This… this was what awaited them? A woman, pregnant and bound, locked in a crypt far below the Waking World? What was wrong with this place? He was still tense but was no longer reaching for his weapons, he glanced at Katherine, who, to his surprise, didn't look confused or bewildered, but just as determined as ever. What did she see that he didn't? He glanced back at the woman who lowered her face into her hands and the Hunter next to him started forward to attack.
"Wait! Katherine what're you-" he didn't get to finish the question as bloody spikes erupted out of the ground, one of them catching the middle of his thigh. It disappeared as quickly as it appeared and left the partial devil swearing and taking a couple of stumbling steps as his healing kicked in to take care of it. Katherine was already forward, twin blades flashing rapidly in her hands at the woman in white. It only took a couple of hits before the woman cried out and there was a crack as the manacles that bound her hands were snapped clean in two. Nero had felt the wound on his thigh close up enough to no longer inhibit his gait and stepped into the battle with a heavy heart.
What had this woman been through that her first reaction upon seeing strangers was to attack them rather than attempt to speak? He had taken down demons that had tried to trick him and pull on his heartstrings on plenty of occasions but this? This felt different somehow.
She'd pulled a dagger out from somewhere and was using it in tandem with her blood to attack them. Nero heard the sound of a baby crying once more when he'd taken a backstep to reload Blue Rose and saw Katherine get caught up in some sort of arcane magic. He flew back into the fight to distract their enemy from his friend and quickly found himself facing five rather than one of them. The duplication quickly turned out to be just that, weaker copies generated in desperation that went down with a swift bullet between the eyes. In fact the original didn't outlast her copies by long, collapsing with a dying burble of blood escaping her lips and a hand reached for the ceiling. Her blood continued oozing onto the floor, Nero and Katherine standing and watching silently.
"This is wrong." Nero said quietly, reaching down to close the dead woman's uncanny eyes. Sure she'd attacked them and much of this nightmare of a world was kill or be killed that didn't mean that he couldn't show respect for the dead.
"She was a queen." Katherine said, matching Nero's soft tone. The partial devil glanced up at her, the curiosity plain on his face. "She appeared before me just after I defeated Rom, almost seeming to beckon the blood moon in. However I believe she saw us as a threat when we appeared here before her."
"Yeah," Nero scoffed "I would too."
"We had little option Nero." the Hunter said, kneeling down next to him and looking at the fallen monarch before reaching a hand into one of the many bloody wounds that littered her body and pulling something from within. Nero wrinkled his nose at the squelching sound that was produced but the lack of reaction by his gag reflex spoke volumes of how many horrors had been performed and witnessed over his life. What Katherine pulled from within the body however, did cause him to balk slightly however.
"What is that?" he asked as the thing dripped loose bits of gore and blood over the Hunter's hands and onto the floor.
"A part of the Queen's consciousness, a continuation of her life." Katherine said, holding the mass gently for something she's just ripped out of another person. Nero noted something that looked way too much like tiny fingers and turned around, refusing to look or consider it any further. There was too much wrong with what they'd just done already.
"We should return to the Dream." he said "We're done down here yeah?" the feeling of the miles and miles of stone and dreams and nightmares above them was starting to feel overly oppressive, he needed to see the sky, no matter how fucked up it was.
"Yes. I believe we are safe to return." she said, her footsteps approaching behind him as he took several stiff paces over to the lantern that hadn't been visible prior to the death of the queen. He glanced to his side as he knelt next to it, meeting Katherine's bright gaze; there was almost something behind that gaze… a depth, a space, knowledge that should never be known. The partial devil shook it off and concentrated on the lamp, trying to mentally prepare for the space between spaces.
-Devil's Hunt-
"Traversing that other nightmare realm feels like it was in another lifetime." Nero said as they approached the large building. Katherine nodded.
"Another lifetime moments ago." she said and Nero wasn't sure if he should be appreciative or disturbed by how aptly that described the situation. There wasn't much time to consider however as the largest spider that the devil hunter had ever fought dropped off the ceiling, it's brood not far behind it.
"Well good thing they called an exterminator eh?" he ribbed Katherine before using his Breaker to gain some verticality, revving Red Queen as the air wooshed past him. Being able to get over them proved to be the best strategy, turning what would have been a somewhat difficult fight into a cakewalk. Before either of them had started to break a sweat there were a large number of spider corpses scattered on the ground of the large church-like building.
"Well that was a bit anticlimactic." Nero sighed as they picked their way around the curled arthropods and into a long hallway.
"Better than death." Katherine said, closing her cleaver again and pausing to open a chest. She rummaged around, tossed a couple of bullets to Nero and kicked it closed again. The partial devil took the bullets with a vague grimace, if he ever made it out of here, Blue Rose was going to need some real work. The higher silver content in the bullets did a lot to take down beasts and was a good option in a pinch when he didn't have the concentration to generate some out of demonic energy but they were really gumming up the works of his gun. The white light of the moon illuminated the catwalk that led to the next building and the man that stood between them and their destination. Katherine pulled out the twin blades that she'd been carrying around lately and Nero put a hand out
"Can we at least try to talk to this one?" he asked. The Hunter gave him a skeptical look but sheathed the Blades at her thigh with a shrug. Nero removed his Breaker, it tended to confuse or enthrall everyone here and he didn't need that while dealing with a potentially hostile individual.
"Hello?" Nero called out, waving a hand at the person. They jolted and turned around, apparently not aware of their presence prior to that moment. The stranger was a young man, wearing fine clothes and spectacles. He was holding a long, thin sword and what appeared to Nero to be a watering can of some sort.
"Who sends you?" the man called, the tension with which he held his weapon didn't bode well to the partial devil who glanced at Katherine for a hopefully appropriate answer.
"Gherman." she called out. There was a long pause and Nero was afraid that their simple attempt at peace was about to be shot down when the man called back.
"Gherman disappeared long ago, who are you? Did Mensis send you?" he called back. Katherine hesitated for a long moment, Nero had heard her mention Mensis before, in their long discussions of the different factions that had sprouted from Byrgenwerth, clearly the hostility of the man depended on the answer.
"No, we are simple Hunters on the search for answers, may we approach? My throat is parched from all this shouting." Katherine called out across the gap. Another pause that seemed too long for comfort and the man shouted back.
"You may."
The man turned out to be far younger than Nero anticipated, looking to be a few years younger than the partial devil himself and what he'd first taken for a watering can appeared to be some sort of primitive flamethrower. He hadn't set down his weapons but he did hold them a bit more relaxed. He gave them a critical eye, focussing on the blood and grime that coated them only briefly and instead spending far longer on the clothes they wore and the weapons they carried. Seeming satisfied with his inspection he sheathed the sword and offered a hand.
"My name is Edgar, what brings you this far into the Nightmare?" he asked as though they'd met at the grocery and not in the middle of a beast filled horror show.
"Nero, and this is my compatriot, Katherine, like she said before, we're looking for answers." the partial devil said with an easy grin, hoping to disarm the man's tension somewhat.
"Ahh, but what are the questions?" he asked, a glint in his eye that gave the partial devil pause. Just how stable was this guy? He sounded relatively sane, which was pretty good for this place, but that didn't mean that he wasn't going to whirl and stab them in the back as soon as they went on their way.
"What is the source of the Nightmare for one." Katherine piped up, Edgar's gaze snapped to her red one.
"I have often wondered the same thing, something to do with Mensis for certain." he said. Nero raised a brow.
"I thought all the people in this Nightmare had to do with Mensis." the partial devil mused. Edgar stiffened as though the words themselves stung.
"You aren't." he said smoothly, perhaps too smoothly. His hands had tightened on his weapons once more, clearly on edge with the mention of the school and what people's associations with it may be.
"No we're not, that's fair," Nero said, nodding placatingly "we hold no love for Mensis, you're welcome to share your opinion with us friend, we won't hold it against you."
"I…" Edgar seemed hesitant and Katherine was watching curiously but he sighed and plowed on ahead "I'm here to investigate into the School of Mensis. I'm with the Choir, we've suspected for a long while that Mensis was going to attempt a ritual that they had not the insight to perform to its fullest capacity. That they could not see the true cost of this endeavor. I haven't yet discovered what they might be hiding in their twisted minds, but I shall."
"Find the nightmare newborn, and silence its harrowing cries." Katherine said. Nero glanced to the side at her, it seemed an odd bit of phrase to bring up but it seemed to make perfect sense to the man before them
"Of course…" he said, turning to look at the moon that hung far lower than it should in the nightmare sky above them, big and bright and white. "Excuse me, if you don't mind, I must consult my notes on this." he nodded to them politely and turned, striding swiftly down the bridge that they had convened on and disappeared into the building that they had their own sights on.
"What…?" Nero said, looking at the space that they'd seen Edgar disappear into.
"Come on," Katherine said "I believe further answers lie ahead."
-Devil's Hunt-
They could hear the madman before they could see him, laughter and screeches and squalls bouncing off the walls ahead of them. Madmen weren't something that Nero had had to deal with terribly often, Agnus had been crazy but at least he'd been able to hold some semblance of a normal conversation; though Dante had spoken of a good handful of wannabe devil sorcerers whom he'd been hired to take down. Whoever was in this place sounded like they'd escaped from a mental asylum. When they finally came upon the speaker the partial devil's suspicions of a crazy person were confirmed, the dark haired man turned to look at them beneath the… bird cage? That he was wearing on his head.
"Ah Kos, or some say Kosm… do you hear our prayers?" he cackled then, the piles of bones before him rising up into a bizarre parody of puppets. "No, we shall not abandon the dream. No one can catch us! No one can stop us now!" and he whirled on his heel, darting into the halls.
"Hey!" Nero darted off after him, trying to keep up in the winding hallways. He turned a hallway, seeing their quarry and Katherine blocking him in on the other side. The partial devil grinned, thinking that they had caught their target but the madman laughed again and simply leapt through the mirror. Nero scrambled up to it, put a hand to it, nothing happened and he slammed his fist into the glass, shattering it.
"It appears our host has other means of travel." Katherine said, twirling her blades in her hands.
"We'll just have to corner him." Nero grumbled, stalking back down the hall, slashing down a marionette on the way.
They split up, chasing the Mensis scholar through winding hallways and destroying mirrors as they went, the devil hunter was quickly getting fed up with the game of cat and mouse. He ended up cornered in a room with a single mirror, Blue Rose barking out a single shot and destroying it before the scholar could jump through. The pair of them ganged up on him, until the man reached his hands toward the skies and there was a flash of white and then the pair of them were being pelted with some sort of rocks.
"The hell was that?!" Nero snapped when he got to his feet, some of the wounds still healing over. The madman was gone and when he heard no response he turned and saw Katherine's lifeless body fading away in a greyish mist.
"Great." he grumbled, charging forward through the doorway that had been opened up on the other side of the room.
"Ah hah hah ha! Ooh! Majestic! A hunter is a hunter, even in a dream… but alas, not too fast! The nightmare swirls and churns unending!" the madman's voice echoed down the stairway as Nero darted up it, muttering curses at the scholar the whole way.
A/N: Poor Katherine, but also a Call Beyond is a bitch. I don't remember struggling much with Micolash, more just getting frustrated with trying to get him into the proper room. But anyway!
Till next time,
-Winged Element