Disclaimer: DMC and its characters aren't mine, but Alastor's a**hole personality is. I made a mistake in "Evil of the Waterways". Dante's eyes are blue, not green. Also, this chapter is rate R.
Sarah: Why thank you!
A huge something exploded into the waterways somewhere behind him. Dante was less than halfway into the dead-end corridor when he turned, grim eyes widening at the terrible nature of what he saw.
"Run-run-run!" urged Alastor.
It was Phantom. Magma coursing beneath its diamond-hard exoskeleton instantly evaporated the humidity in the air around it, only to be replaced by jets of steam wherever it tread. Its considerable bulk scraped with alarming disregard against the waterway confines, fracturing stone, diminishing structural integrity. An instant source for arachnophobia, Phantom defied physics by merely existing!
Mandibles swung wide with a thunderous, heat-wave roar.
Dante splurged a split-second rationalizing how something literally weighing tons could maneuver so well under cramped conditions, and then he was running for his life. Torrents of heat flooded the small cul-de-sac with near volcanic intensity. The rising growl of an inferno told him he was scant seconds from a bad burn. Dante slipped through the steel doors Alastor had forced open -
- as Phantom belched a globe of white-hot plasma.
The space behind him went nova. Stone blocks shattered, then became the consistency of runny syrup. Gallons of water were vapor in the time it took to blink. The massive release of steam and heat caused an equally potent backlash, smashing the steel doors shut with an ear numbing crash! Like a vengeful ghost, a breath of devastation pursued the fleeing hunter, gushing out the instant of the portal's closure. It was like being slapped by giant, fiery hand. The force singed/shoved the hunter toward the opposite wall - would've smashed his face in it, too - but a last-minute twist of the body saved him from that much.
...gonna sting...
Right shoulder and hip took the brunt despite his efforts to distribute the force of impact. Adrenalin kept Dante's legs from giving out, sparing him the inevitable face-first dunk into waterway runoff, which he was quietly grateful. No telling what irreparable damage that would have done to his machismo. It also helped that everything had happened so fast; the part of his brain that told his body he was hurting was left scratching its head, "Huh?".
Two seconds later, it must have gotten the newsflash. Dull, hot spikes of pain slowly pushed into his shoulder and hip - a sensory herald for the inevitable bruises - with soreness everywhere else. Momentary puzzlement invaded when the aches did not immediately fade.
...Guiding Light, Dante stewed with growing displeasure.
Evidently, the cursed key slowed his regenerative powers, if not stopped it completely. Peachy. And there was a low ringing in his ears that he wished would go away. Suddenly, the hunter thought he heard something past the ringing....a familiar cackling. Favoring his injuries, the hunter slowly pushed away from the wall for the false security of a corner, ears pricked at attention. Phantom's overwhelming taint made it extremely difficult to detect other hostile life, and with his hearing temporarily impaired -
- then the spider was gone.
The hell? The hunter had sensed the monster demon's presence as acutely as its brimstone stink.....and then, nothing. "A change of tactics, mayhap?" suggested Alastor, its scheming mind piqued.
How do you figure? came the silent question.
"Phantom is a General of no small renown. In fact, I believe he assumed his station after the previous General retired...then met an untimely end." The spirit chuckled in envious admiration. "Cunning whore-spawn, that Phantom."
Dante didn't know which to believe: Alastor's logic, or Alastor's honesty. One thing he was certain of, though, he'd have to be selective when listening to his spiteful partner from now on. It didn't seem to matter to Alastor how many times Dante ground its pride in the dirt, a sure sign that the wraith would never learn to behave. He had to give it points for tenacity, but that didn't change how he felt about the sword, especially after it had peeked unbidden into his mind earlier before. Dante glanced at the smoking, half-melted steel doors, and knew the mystery of the disappearing Phantom would have to wait.
It's a trend, he thought wryly.
First, Trish does the disappearing act, later Phantom, then the devil knight with the big-ass sword, and now, Phantom again. Dante grunted softly with the effort of getting himself in motion. Ebony and Ivory shared his company once again, and this time, the hunter could clearly sense taint...three of them...floating like haunting ghosts.
Sins.
But which type? The half-devil sucked in a steadying breath. With Ebony and Ivory leading, he pushed on in a brisk jog. He had to hurry. No longer could he perceive the Guiding Light as an inanimate object with a lousy side-effect slapped onto it. The reality of it was far worse, and becoming more apparent the longer it had its claws in him. It was a relentless hunger, utterly mindless and uncaring. It was a never-changing, never-ending starvation no third-world country could hope to match. Worse, it was trying its duly best to sate itself on his vitality.
Sudden dizziness wobbled his hurried pace, and there was this subtle weariness creeping into his joints... The red clad hunter only had to pass by the service tunnel - no time to investigate it - then turn the ensuing corner. He dared to hope there wouldn't be a confrontation, despite the taint hovering in the air. Alas, the trio of Sins appeared simultaneously. Three ivory masks zeroed onto the approaching half-devil with blank expressions and a manic cry. Three giant scythes cocked back in wicked harmony.
"Oh, you did not just try me!" Dante yelled at the obstacles, now running full tilt, and firing into them before finishing his sentence. But that was just fine by the Sins, for they had not waited for Dante to finish, either.
A powerful lunge sent the hunter into a reckless slide beneath the arc of deadly spinning scythes. Despite the difficult maneuver, two bullets clipped the central sin below its left eye, badly cracking the devil's mask, but not shattering it. Another sin came away maimed from the lead stream. With two in distress, only one able-bodied thrower remained. That Sin Scythe summoned back its whirring arsenal, black-hole eyes following the hunter's slide with nightmare concentration.
It watched the slide turn into a double-somersault, the somersaults turn into a soaring leap, the leap turn into a highflying snap-kick. The sin hewed in with the full intention of making the hunter into two.
The boot rushing toward its mask missed horribly -
Elation! the sin felt.
- to hammer against the flat of its scythe, knocking its killing flight at an angle beneath its target -
Icy dismay!
- and Dante brought his other leg about....
The Guiding Light chose that moment to screw with his senses. Without warning, Dante couldn't feel, couldn't hear, couldn't smell or taste; it was like sensory deprivation without the sealed room. There was nothing his body could register, but God, he could see.
The hunter's boot struck home -
- and the sin's fragile mask collapsed in stages. First, the flawless ivory of its left side cracked like fragile eggshells. The boot ground on, disintegrating one eye, disfiguring the delicate brow, the nose. Ruin's march invaded the mask's right half, grinding fragments into fragments, and completing its destruction in an eruption of white porcelain.
The Light restored his perceptions with an abruptness that made time seem like it skipped ahead without him. One minute, he was airborne, the next, he was running from the dying devil's screams. The destruction of a hellish scythe behind him cleared the befuddling miasma in his head, and it was then he noticed the surviving sins.
Or lack of.
Doesn't matter, he thought quickly. Just get out!
Dante could sense their locations, now; they prowled in the walls, circling like sharks, gliding on ghostly tatters that whispered catastrophe to those that listened....but something was wrong. It was becoming increasingly difficult to focus on the world around him. Like the sand's steady descent in an hourglass, thoughts were half-formed when they began to slip away.
It was a creeping feeling at first, then of something progressively going wrong inside him. Warning bells were ringing in his skull, alerting him against another assault of the Guiding Light. The hunter found himself locked in an internal struggle.
The lion-embossed door came into view, and he reached for the latch.
The sands were sluggishly gaining momentum, and Dante could feel himself slowly becoming buried. A landslide of incoherent thinking was taking form, an avalanche that would consume his mind, his very self -
"Mongrel, no!"
- and Dante recoiled as bitter cold stung his hand. Shaking the pain from the limb, he saw that a thin coat of frost had stiffened the leather of his glove, and then he was looking at the source of the deathly chill. Sealing his only exit were a layer of leering faces - tortured and deformed, all - their dead eyes peering out with suffering, and dark yearning. Unbelievable cold radiated an inch above the eerily shifting gray surface.
A ward of souls!
He realized this about the same time the spirits surged forth in a giant form. The smoky emanation of a gigantic, grasping hand pushed toward the hunter, urged on by the damned who so desperately craved life over limbo.
"Move!" barked Alastor in harsh command, but it needn't have bothered.
Dante was already staggering away from a melon-sized fingertip as it swiped the air before his sweating face. In the finger's wake trailed air of such iciness that the half-devil's breath puffed white before he could evade entirely. Crushing the space he'd once stood expended whatever energy the wraith-hand had drawn upon, and, wailing silently, the hand of souls dissolved into wisps of ectoplasm. The otherworldly chill dissipated almost as quickly without its source.
A short distance away, the red clad hunter let his body slump wearily. Delirium clawed at the walls safeguarding his sanity. He refused to lean against anything for support, however good the momentary comfort might feel, since luxury like that would imply he could afford to indulge his declining condition.
"Do not fall here, mongrel," rasped an unsympathetic Alastor. "Do not succumb. Your mind is under siege, this much is obvious, but so is your ability to fight back! Do you wish to die in obscurity?"
...Your fault...
Dante couldn't see the mordant smile, but he could hear it in the spirit's voice. "Yes, my fault... Had I warned you of the Light's ill effects blah-blah-blah, well I didn't. It was not betrayal, mongrel, for such joys are beyond me, thanks to you. I...helped...in my own way," it continued with a dragon's grin. "There is no better incentive than self-preservation, yes? Unless the Light takes that away, as I already pointed out..."
The Guiding Light hurled a second wave of disorientation, but it wasn't as bad as the first. The sins were becoming agitated. Constantly did they maintain opposite poles around the hunter - before and behind, to his left and his right - leisurely circling only a dozen feet away. With their quarry standing suspiciously still in the narrow corridor, the duo alternately appeared and disappeared to and from opposing walls. When they did not focus on the aura of his life force while immersed in stone, they would catch clear glimpses of the half-devil, and wonder.
Would a cunning ruse be played out, like it had with their less fortunate leader?
Still hurting from their injuries, neither had wanted to press their luck. And why did the hunter's aura pulse bright, only to withdraw, slightly dimmer than before? Since the Sin Scythes came from a level of the Underworld almost completely devoid of light - hence their shadowy composition - their vision was keenly adapted to the spectrum the soul always radiated. This energy clearly outlined person, so it was virtually impossible to shake a Sin's notice once captured....but what was this?
On the hunter's person beat a dark....hole, a key-shaped rip of sable nothingness. This pulsing artifact, this spot of oblivion, swallowed light with a voracity that sent shivers rippling through the sins' psyches. With their altered sight came a stunning, but pleasant, realization. The light it devoured was not the earthly illumination of mortal sight, but the light of a living aura.
The hunter's aura.
The false-reapers had watched with wary interest, but now, with this twist of circumstance, one sin signaled to the other with a deliberate motion of its scythe. The other caught the sharp movement, and understood.
The silent exchange had occurred in stone, but the spike in aggressive taint didn't escape Dante's notice. Mercifully, the Light's effects were finally ebbing, and it was by his choice that he exaggerated his faltering health.
"The Guiding Light smothers you, yet you would tempt fate and lure in your enemies as you are." It was a statement of fact. "This is bold bordering foolishness."
The sins ceased the habitual, casual twirl of their scythes. Dark forms cautiously inched inward in their slow orbit, respectful of the hunter's abilities, but eager to see blood fly. Dante's knees "buckled", and suddenly he was on all fours, which goaded the sins a little closer. What the false-wraiths had failed to notice was slight, a motion too quick for them to follow even if they had been forewarned.
Neither noted the sudden absence of Ebony and Ivory, nor did they deem significance over the shotgun's new position. The hunter's muddled senses were returning to him in fair doses, and it felt good to have some stability back, but he knew he wouldn't be functioning at one-hundred percent when the time came.
So, to make up for that, he would have to sacrifice something. The diameter between himself and the orbiting sins shrank to only a few feet, and it was then they began to cackle with evil glee. When they abruptly stopped three-feet before and behind him, the scythes came down -
Fuck finesse!
- and the devil hunter sprang to life with a swift backwards tumble. Converging blades rang loud against solid stone, though it couldn't compare to the deafening roar of the shotgun. In passing beneath the sin attacking from behind, Dante fired up the ethereal cloak.
High-speed pellets cracked-smashed-annihilated the sin's mask, just gone in an eruption of white chips. Though the initial assault had buried its scythe at least five inches into the ground, the suddenness of the deathblow caused the sin to wrench the weapon free. The weapon flew from its master's dying grip in a directionless flight into the corridor's wall, the sound of something shattering almost immediately resounding therein.
Dante sprang to his feet, adrenalin and controlled-anger correcting the unsteady legs.
Before he could leap away, the lone sin blasted through the disintegrating body of its comrade, heedless that the action fully dispersed the other's form. It bore in keening with berserk fury as the massive scythe whistled down like a giant, biting fang. Dante moved to defend -
- but the sin's downward slash turned into a vanishing act. Straight down the devil plunged, laughing insanely as it melded into the inundated ground.
Christ, where...?
"Behind!"
Taint stained the air.
"Dammit!"
The crafty sin rose up behind the hunter like Death personified, scythe upraised in ghostly hands. Denied the time to about face, Dante raised the shotgun with both hands above his head. A deliberate, last-second back-step saved him from a down-the-middle skewering as scythe-haft collided against gun barrel with bone-shuddering force.
Holy freakin' shit!
Six - very long! - feet of black, razor steel hovered less than an inch in front of his face and body.
If he sneezed, he'd lose his nose, as well as the majority of his face. What's more were the striking details such a close vantage provided: like the clotted, black stains all along the scythe's length, or its gleaming, silvery edge -
- its gleaming, serrated edge.
They were like miniature daggers, but finer. They were like the teeth of a saw, but sharper. They could kill with a single pass, but it would be agony before the end, of this, there was no doubt in Dante's mind.
To kill someone quick, yet to cheat the victim from a painless death, sickened the hunter to the point of physical illness. And then -
- the Guiding Light breached a memory -
Oh, God no!
- Of a night with no sleep, of a white-haired child, recently orphaned, wrestling with logic and counter-logic until he was greeted by the dawn. Ever-wondering with innocence scoured away by trauma: Why his family?
...blood.
His mother had screamed his name.
So much...
Vergil had just screamed.
There was agony, but he survived.
Unable to understand this personal Armageddon, the boy half-devil had sworn vengeance, had vowed to wear their memory against the ones responsible. The color red....the color of....so much....it was everywhere....
And the three burning eyes would...not...stop...laughing!
The flash of memory tore a ragged scream from deep within Dante's soul. The pain of old wounds burned bright and clear, searing his consciousness with sorrow and so much more. The images all, rekindled by yet another crushing wave of the cursed Light.
The anguished howl unnerved the sin beyond words. It pulled away with a yelp and heartfelt fright, reflexively trying to recall where it had heard similar wails.
Reacting, not thinking, the red clad hunter took Alastor's power.
The Guiding Light's ravaging power was suddenly forced to do battle with an equally destructive energy - the triggered devil knight. The forces were instantly locked in a struggle for dominance, though it amounted to little more than a draw, yet neither would yield to the other. This meant one thing: The knight's regenerative ability negated the Light's wasting side-effects, and vise-versa, leaving both powers "active", but disabled.
This outcome mattered not at all to the raging half-devil knight, too deep was he in the throes of his past. Alastor appeared in the blazing knight's right hand, the shotgun clenched tight in his left. His outline blurred with the simple act of turning to face the Sin Scythe.
The false wraith quailed under the knight's withering glare. It didn't - couldn't - see the blur that ended its life, but it did make sense of the disturbing howl. The raw emotion of Hell's tortured damned were present in the knight's scream, there was no doubt, but there also surged near-boundless fury in that well of misery. It was a righteous ferocity that did not exist in the Underworld, but was more suited to the celestial warriors of Heaven.
The remnants of the Sin's mask - finer than dust - clouded the air from a lightning-quick nine-strike of Alastor's edge, and flat. Now the devil knight made for the ward of souls. Like the trap room of the Beelzebub, the ward dissipated. The hand of the dead reached out one final time, like the reaching palm of a starving beggar, then blew apart with the sound of breaking glass -
- and the devil knight blasted open the door with a well-placed kick.
The portal's hinges violently snapped - for they were never meant to swing inward - and the two hundred-plus pound door was sent flipping twice into the inner chamber. Dante was a blinding shape, all speed and searing bright energy. A distant part of him knew the reason for his being here, but straightforward logic fragmented as a mirror at the sight of demonic Beelzebub.
The squashed body of a green demon twitched dying beneath the battered weight of the door; it had only seconds of life left, but that was more than enough time to witness the slaughter.
He was fury.
Five fliers and two green crawlers barely felt Alastor's edge, only to fall dismembered a breath later. Three more airborne demons simply ceased to be, their bodies liquefied from a single, devil-powered shotgun volley.
He was vengeance.
Gripping the empty shotgun by the muzzle, it made a decent offhand weapon. Four more blue beelzebub, and the last green, erupted in ghastly sprays of yellowish-green gore in the whirlwind of blade and gun.
So quick were the knight's movements, that not a droplet of demon anatomy marred his armor as he tore apart the stragglers. The sole flier smacked wetly against a stairwell balustrade, maggots and internal fluids painting the nearby surface. Panting with exhilaration, the knight spun around in a blur of motion; there was one beelzebub that yet lived.
Piercing eyes of blue-white found the pinned green crawler.
Crackling lines of electricity flicked across the devil knight's heaving frame, as if sympathetic to its master's excitement. He strode slowly - a pitiless judge, a stalking predator - to within a few inches of the beelzebub's alien head. Blood and venom-worms drooled from the demon's broken jaw, dimming crimson eyes barely able to discern the shape towering before it. It would drown in the ankle-high pool if it didn't expire first....
He was vengeance.
A feral growl echoed absolute loathing inside the devil knight's visor, and he leaped. High up the glowing figure rose - legs tucked in, arms spread wide like ominous wings - a sword and gun in either gauntlet. Silent came the descent - like death's whisper - until the last moment, when down he rammed his heels onto the frame pinning the demon. If the sharp crunch of exoskeleton wasn't satisfying enough, then the sight of pressure-squeezed gore splattering like a ghastly corona was more than rewarding. The devil knight stood tall amidst the hated dead -
- when Alastor could no longer maintain the knight's form.
Chasm: Was that over the top? I can never tell! - quote from "Batman Forever"