Disclaimer: DMC and its characters aren't mine. This version of Alastor's and Ifrit's persona are mine.
Only after he relinquished his fiery devil form, did Dante begin to appreciate how lucky he had been. The one and only time Griffon had connected with an attack, and his body was still all shaky-pins-and-needles. He had to sit down.
Sucks to be me, the hunter thought wryly.
How easy it was to forget he wasn't untouchable. Easier still to be reminded of it. Given his exceptional heritage, a swollen ego wasn't unusual. Periodically deflating it was the only way to keep things real, lest he become something....regrettable.
Ask a person: What do you do with powers beyond the norm? How would you conduct yourself if the knowledge you're more than human were an absolute?
If there was an answer to that, Dante was convinced it was subjective. He, for one, chose merely to live, and let concepts of superiority and prejudice largely slide under the radar. He tried, anyway.
Hmm...
So...
How had Sparda - a pure devil - learned to cope?
Even the most saintly compassion couldn't have disguised the fact that he was a veritable god among mortals. How had his pity for a species that feared and reviled his race not turned into a bitter beast? How had mercy not decayed into the need to dominate? Yet Sparda protected on, even as he hid his true form from sight for generations.
Dante could only envy his father's unshakable resolve; he wasn't so sure. When the evil of a single human being amounted to a legion of hellspawn, he often wondered if there was another reason for his father's role as humanity's savior...
Silently, the hunter tallied his devil sire's age before death had stolen him. Over two millennia.
But what about half-devils?
It never failed to make him wonder, at least a little. In the end, the thought lay unanswered, for there was no real point in knowing when you'll die.
Around him and the ship, low, dreary clouds rolled by, an unremitting march of gray. A pale, pasty white light shone from within the murk, as warm as moonshine, and without a source
Dante stood, finally, testing his sea legs after Griffon's shock therapy, and found that he had more or less recovered. He carefully scanned around, out of habit.
At key points on deck, there were large, iron baskets stuffed with wood too old and too saturated to catch even if aided by blowtorch. With typical disregard to the laws of probability, these three-legged stands were the only things untouched by the fight, even magically rekindling with cheery blue fire. It was a sign the ghost ship felt safe.
Dante smirked at that. The dilapidated galleon would never win a game of chess, obviously, but it was self-aware....somehow.
The fog clung to everything like a greedy specter. Bright though the watch fires were, thick gloom covetously hid everything beyond its sultry cloak. There was the occasional vague something that peeked through, but they were little more than shadows, and suspect of ever being there.
Dante assumed his ride was still on the narrow channel, flanked by soaring sandstone cliffs, capped by different castle wings and towers. That was his hope, anyway. Otherwise, he didn't know where the hell he was.
"Hunter, onward!" Ifrit advised with gusto. "If I must serve, then it is best done on the field of battle. With lots of opposition. Yes, I wish to scorch something to cinders. Something living, preferably."
"...A glutton for carnage if ever there was one," Alastor scoffed.
Ifrit belted out a string of gargling growls that was its way of expressing amusement. Dante rolled his eyes skyward, as if to ask "Why me?".
"It's times like these that I wonder why I keep you two around," he sighed, more to himself than to the spirit duo. "And then I remember, "Oh yeah! You're both evil incarnate, and can't be trusted in anyone else's hands." Silly me..."
Running a hand through his hair, he discovered that some silver-white strands were standing on end with lingering static. He made for the captain's cabin while smoothing down the trouble spots.
When he got there, the twin ghost swords that once barred his way were now positioned on either side of the cabin's doorframe. White fire licked across the broadswords' outline, but gave no indication they would activate again, as they had with Griffon's appearance.
Dante opened the door, and stepped inside.
. . .
The smell was like a slap to the face.
It was a combination of lingering death, and something like stagnating seawater. Moldering wood lent to the already putrid odor, as well as various other spoiled matter around the room.
Like the captain's corpse.
Alastor gave a noncommittal zap! of electricity.
Dante wrinkled his nose from the stench, and lifted the cloth of his turtleneck up to his face.
Ifrit's disturbing enthusiasm bubbled up like molten rock. "Hunter, those old bones over there....may I burn them? Say yes!"
"You're all about that, I've noticed."
"Our friend Ifrit - the unbalanced fellow that he is - is about as subtle as a brushfire," Alastor remarked.
"I was famous for immolating countless souls in one fell inferno!" Ifrit puffed with pride.
"Uh-huh..."
As Dante moved further into the room, Ifrit began spouting lines of horrific pastimes involving hellfire.
Overhead, and more into the middle of the room, hung an antiquated, brass chandelier, swaying in sympathy with the ocean's mood. The tarnished metal gleamed dully from the light of its many lit candles. Their weak glow wavered against shadows that grew, and shrank, according to their rocking. Portholes with misted, scummy glass did not help the muted ambiance.
There were actually other things to inspect, but Dante saw nothing was as...odd, as the corpse on its throne. There was something about it, he couldn't place it right away.
Death didn't faze the hunter. Quite the opposite, it interested him to an extent. He wasn't a necrophile - God no, nothing so sick! - his interests only going so far as any good forensics investigator would permit. Studying this sensitive subject was easy, thanks to smart programs on the tube, books, mostly the internet.
Eventually, heavy research had pulled him past the land of necropsy and medical science, into the religious, and supernatural. Life after death, the eternal soul, the existence of God and Satan, Heaven and Hell. Hell certainly existed. Nothing solid about the rest, though.
"Mon-grel," Alastor whined in distress. "Ifrit will not be silent! I no longer wish to know how to properly smother a damned soul in brimstone!"
"Can I ask you something?" Dante was not conversational.
"I....what?"
"What's wrong with this picture?" He waved his free hand toward the dead captain.
"You mean, aside from the obvious, like a still-rotting corpse on a still-rotting pirate ship from the eighteenth century?"
"Natch'."
Alastor reached out with powers that mimicked sight, and immediately saw the problem. Ignoring the frayed satin rug beneath the long, formal dinner table. Looking past the once-valuable dining cloth, the seemingly random bits of tableware and liquor bottles. A cursory glance at the finely dressed body slumped in its tattered, wingback throne. Never mind the hands-turned-claws gripping the armrests, or the dark, impossibly scrutinizing eye sockets.
Alastor focused on the eerie deaths grin, plastered firmly where lips had shriveled to dust.
"The dead do not smile....not like that."
"Mm-hm, glad we're on the same page, for once."
"I don't understand. I've seen my share of humans - living and dead - and none look as...forbidding, as this one."
"Well, this bad boy was a nasty customer in life. It's possible those vibes carried over in death."
"And from where does this wellspring of insight come from, O Knowledgeable One?"
Dante released his turtleneck - the smell was bearable, now - and glanced up at the decor hanging like an ominous halo over the captain's chair. Oversized human skulls - looking to be real bone - leered evilly from their places on either side of a massive, darkly burnished ships wheel.
"Eh, call it a guess."
"Rrrr-Hunter!" Ifrit was growing irritable without the distraction of violence or something burning. "If there isn't a purpose for us being here, then let us take our leave."
Dante began searching the cabin, instead. For what? For anything, Preferably a clue what to do next. He didn't like to admit to himself, that since arriving on Mallet Island, he'd done little more than stumble from one encounter after another. With only brief spats of easily done, straightforward puzzle solving, he was relying too heavily on where luck took him for his own liking. It was even worse to consider that he was being led around by an invisible leash, a manipulation he could neither avoid nor fully detect and counter.
The red clad hunter wasn't used to being this aimless, and that bothered him. Besides, he figured there had to be something important in Captain Dead's cabin, or else what was that whole protect-the-ferry-of-souls business all about?
In hindsight, the reason could be something as stupid as treasure.....Dante blinked.
There, against the far left wall, was a collapsed crate - correction, a chest - with its contents spilled sinfully in view. The red clad hunter moved from one side of the dimly lit room, to the objects of his attention. Bending down on one knee to better inspect his find, he realized what he knew all along.
Gold coins. Lots of them.
And gems! Their original luster was marred by a layer of grime, but there could be no mistake of their value. All the classic trappings of a pirate's bounty was spread out before him, with nothing to stop him but the limits of his pockets! Now, Dante was not a greedy man, but damn! only a fool would pass this up willingly. He reached down to take the weight of a fortune in one hand -
- when a little voice in the back of his mind - called Discretion, not Alastor or Ifrit - reminded him of where he was.
Dante stood as he turned away from temptation. Captain Dead seemed to regard him with amusement reserved for thieving children, daring him to take the gold.
As a rule of thumb for one in the hunting biz, it was important to see things as they are, not as they appear to be. It was part of his profession to distrust the superficial, so why was he letting his imagination breathe false life into a corpse, when he knew Dead was dead?
Because the creepy son of a bitch is looking at me. Dead, but not dead. Somehow...maybe...
The hunter growled sharply, uncertainties of certainties gnawing at him when he knew they shouldn't be. He didn't even sense taint, damn it! Anthropomorphizing was a pain in the ass, Dante decided finally. Compounding this Twilight Zone moment, he couldn't be sure if the loot was trapped or not....and the captain's constant, patronizing grinning was hardly reassuring! Oh, but if the gold was free for the taking... He cast a fleeting glance at the forbidden wealth.
Never in a hundred years will this come my way again, Dante groaned inwardly.
He turned away with painful finality.
Alastor tsk-tsked condescendingly.
Apparently, the spirit had wanted him to give in, if only to remind him of his weakness later on. Ifrit was out of it, as usual, busily arguing with no one which would burn best: the living, or the dead?
Sifting about the room one last time revealed nothing relevant.
There were water-damaged maps adorning half the wall space. A few small paintings hung destroyed by moisture and mold. A pair of bookshelves flanked the cabin's entrance, them and their contents poised to crumble under their own weight. To compliment their once-elegant look, an olden style globe of the ancient world sat nearby. Age and elements had turned the antique into a piece of junk.
A modest stone fireside sat in the shadows near the back of the room. Atop its mantle kneeled a familiar lion-headed statue, the Watcher of Time. Dominating space on the opposite side of the cabin, was another statue, this of a Greek pantheon carved in realistic detail from the waist up, and situated atop a white-turned-gray marble base. The statue held something close.
Half-devil eyes narrowed, discerning a flaw in the pantheon's design.
With a sparing glower at Captain Dead, Dante strode over to the peculiar artwork. Like every Greek god, this one conveyed serenity with knowledge that mortals would balk at. It was sublime with the secrets of the cosmos, staring out with alabaster eyes that at once saw nothing, yet everything.
The marble figure just screamed "perfection!", which sparked disgust in Dante that was as justified as it was unavoidable.
Perfect face, perfect physique, perfect bearing, even the wreath of laurel leaves atop its crown of short curly hair: perfect.
It was wrong. All wrong.
It was just like the paintings within the castle walls, and the sculptures, and the suits of armor, the castle's architecture itself. Once upon a time, they might have belonged to the human world, but no longer. Hell itself had corrupted every molecule. Though perfect, this statue was a caricature, a false prize of human history. This statue, this ghost ship, this whole island had no right to exist.
Slender marble arms gathered an object close to the smooth marble chest, a thing that wasn't as seamless as its bearer. It was a caduceus, by the look of it.
Almost two feet in length, silver plated with flecks of rust, a pair of flared, feathered wings at one end, and the twining bodies of twin serpents dominating the rest, it was the same image slapped onto many a ambulance.
Definitely a caduceus.
But it was held awkwardly... Dante tested his theory, and rapped the suspect item with his knuckles.
A genuine flaw amidst illusionary perfection became clear: The staff shook loosely in the statue's grip. And he'd seen this staff before, didn't he? Out of curiosity borne from growing certainty, Dante read the solitary name stamped onto the marble base.
It read, "Hermes".
The hunter grinned like a kid. No way! As in, the "Staff of Hermes"?
"Mongrel!" Alastor exclaimed, realizing the same thing a beat later. "Outside the cathedral, beyond the shattered bridge, wasn't there a likeness of that thing? Near the engraving of the Pride of Lion riddle?"
"Absolutely."
"Then what are you waiting for, hunter?" Ifrit gurgled impatience. "Take it, and let's be off!"
Before Dante could protest, the possessed gauntlets guided his hand, and snatched the Staff of Hermes in one fluid swipe.
________
At one end of the Staff was welded a hair-thin wire.
The wire, remarkably untouched by time or the elements, snaked down the lower levels of the ancient galleon. Just above the bilge - the bottommost interior of the ship - a lone pair of barrels sat forgotten. The metal line was attached to a clever flint and steel mechanism, which, incidentally, lay deep inside both barrels. With the sudden pull of the wire, the mechanism produced a small spray of yellow sparks -
- igniting the black powder within.