Disclaimer: DMC and its characters belong to Capcom. The helnyne demon, his familiars, and Alastor's/Ifrit's personalities are mine. PG-13
Burryk: A miracle? Naahh. Just a fluke of flukes.
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Seconds later found Trish exactly where the helnyne had left her: Half blind, with a mind awhirl with too too many damnable questions. When at last words found their way to her lips they were muttered, and dark.
"That's it. No more. Whatever happens, happens. I've had it with this garbage..."
She looked tired, as if she had long fought the irresistible. A deadening emotion flit across the she-devil's features, and then she was gone with a crack of self-made light and thunder.
In one shadowed corner, something moved.
Body cloaked in summoned darkness, taint hidden behind his will, the helnyne stepped forward. He had suspected this would happen. Now it was clear she was going to take her job very seriously from this time forward. Despite all that he told her, she was going to forge ahead into the unknown, thoughts of the hunter be damned. Good. Newfound focus would come swiftly to her, the demon knew, but not now. First, solitude. She had much to think about, after all.
The demon vanished in the light of his own exit. He didn't go far.
. . .
Once there were four main spires atop the sprawling cathedral roof, but elements and disrepair had crumbled that number down to two. The surviving twins protruded from the flowing domes of the rooftop like breakers in a frozen sea of slate. The four-sided structures gently curved skyward, tapering to a blunt point almost sixty feet in the air. The holy icons that once crowned their blocky points had ages since been removed. Pitted tiles ribbed the structures like the segmented armor of an insect. And then there were the ridges that traced their four corners. The hook-like projections, whether observed from five feet away or five-hundred, conveyed the irresistible sense of looking at a pair of giant, serrated spearheads. They stood equidistant from each other on large, wide, and raised platforms that were closely guarded at four points by gargoyles sunk to the waist in stone.
The demon crouched between two such goggle-eyed statues.
With the vast majority of the church cordoned off by rubble, or dark power, he was assured his privacy here. The weather had fully deteriorated by the time he made his appearance. This pleased him. Even as the dusky sky opened up and drenched him fully, his mood could not be subdued. The storm signified the beginning of the end of mankind, and the rise of the Underworld. Too, his soaring disposition included the fine work he managed on Mundus's spy.
He had lied to her.
Mundus's plans were slow to fruition, slower than he had anticipated, and he was irritated by that, but the Emperor of the Devil Kingdom was hardly fearful. Arrogance thickly armored him from that alien emotion. With wits untarnished by uncertainty, he spent great care on every tactical decision thus far, albeit with frustrating results due to a certain red clad obstacle. It was not entirely Mundus's fault, though, that he sacrificed so many of his troops to a sudden change of plans....
It had been the helnyne's responsibility to warn the prowls within Mallet castle - a task that, if successful, would not only have saved many lives, but would have hindered his own interests considerably. For the price of paltry lives, the demon was able to accomplish one of his goals: To make friendly contact with Trish.
Well, maybe "friendly" is too strong a word...
The demon smiled at the memory of her exquisite anger. So few denizens were gifted with the capacity for such...defined facial expression. With her, he could clearly see the fury in every line of her face. He would remember that face...
Another one of his goals had been to compound the doubt already plaguing her. Because of Sparda's son, she had been doubting herself, her feelings, and - surely on a subconscious level - her loyalties. Her "secret" infatuations had made the helnyne's job worlds easier. Just throw in some choice lies, and now she was skeptical of her Emperor, as well as her future under him. She had been nudged passed the point of no return, and soon her true nature would get the better of her.
Whether she admitted it or not, she had already aligned herself to that nature.
And the beautiful part about the whole thing was that, by the time she understood that his assertions were false, she would have no reason to raise questions. Oh sure she could request an audience with Mundus to express her concerns openly, but in doing so she would alert him to a matter on which she had little to no presentable evidence.
Great Mundus would either laugh and condemn her to cruel ridicule, or punish her outright for wasting his time. Trish would gain nothing by pursuing the matter, leaving the helnyne to walk free. As things stood now, the demon highly doubted the blonde was going to seek out another living being for a while yet.
And vice-versa. No one will bother her, I've seen to that.
Placing Alastor squarely in the half-devil's hands early in the game had been an act of genius. He had taken precautions before the theft, of course, but still the whole task had been...challenging. Leaving many a witness lifeless in his wake, he had smuggled Alastor into Mallet Castle's halls. A trinket handy had kept the devil arms dormant the entire trip, and in the end, the result of his efforts had been more than satisfactory.
Alastor's House immediately fell upon a rival House they believed was the true culprit. After the first hour since the sword's disappearance, at least ten other Houses had been sucked into the feud. Their private armies were huge, and many more bitter rivals were expected to participate before the day's end.
The demon could only imagine how frenzied the fighting had gotten since then. Presumably, his spies were in the thick of it, gathering information from all sides if they could, and generally trying to survive the day. He hadn't heard word form them in quite some time. No matter. They weren't even his spies to begin with. As long as Alastor lingered in the hunter's possession, the demon wouldn't worry.
Adding Ifrit to the man's arsenal had not been his idea, though. In reality, the maniac had acted alone, surprising even the members of its own House - who had locked it away with self-preservation in mind - by rocketing out of Hell, and planting itself smack on Mallet Island. All efforts to retrieve the gauntlets had produced much ash.
It was a mess even Mundus was having a hard time cleaning up, what with his plans of world domination in full swing.
And as long as he stays distracted, I couldn't care less what he does.
The demon's thoughts returned to his newly acquired pawn. The look of terror in Trish's face at the prospect of losing Mundus - and thus, her own life - had also been a real treat. He would've pictured her brooding back in the library again...had the room still existed. If the worst cast scenario came down on her, he was certain she would not hesitate to seek refuge among mortals. She was resilient, as he had said.
He had lied to her, but he had also told her certain....truths.
The hunter, in his refusal to lay down and die, was closing in, and Mundus was indeed bent on the man's slaughter. Mundus really had hatched a spur-of-the-moment plan that demanded Mallet's impromptu alteration - a plan, the demon was told, designed to make the hunter's death decidedly more personal. The demon shook his head at the devil Emperor's love of ironies. The fallen angel had overseen the destruction of Sparda, and so he would attend to his son in a similar fashion.
As for me...
The helnyne had been relatively honest about himself in Trish's presence. He really did serve Mundus...as well as one other powerful individual. He really was an errand boy...to a point. Double-agents had to be versatile. Hells, but he hated his job! He hadn't meant to let on that part of himself until much later, maybe never, but it was a passing regret to dwell on. Trivialities shouldn't get in the way of ambition.
He really had saved Trish's life...though not out of the goodness of his heart. He had his orders, and she still had her role to play.
The demon gurgled his satisfaction. Rivulets of mildly sulfuric rain - Hell was indeed near - harmlessly traced the lines of his face and muzzle. He had lied, had told half-truths, and he had also deceived the female on at least one more level. Though he appeared Helnyne, he was no more a member of that species as he was one of the Trinity.
The change wasn't radical, but it was an explicit mark of his unique breed. He was a race of one. The air shimmered oddly between his shoulder blades, rising to form a vague shape. The same phenomenon extended from the base of his spine like a tail of heat waves. Swiftly it materialized into a sinuous shape that hardened into dark, glossy scales. The reptilian tail terminated in a head that was both parts serpentine, and draconian. Fully formed, it issued a languid yawn of its fanged head, bright yellow eyes blinking, and filled with a sentience of their own.
The shape on the demon's back similarly stretched the kinks out of muscles grown stiff from inactivity. Unlike its fellow symbiont, which could feasibly be compared to most earthly serpents, the second creature composed of a horned, goat-like head that could never mirror a mortal species. Dark ruby eyes shone with a light that was at once cunning, and more than a little crazed. The base of its supple neck disappeared in its host's mane - melding seamlessly with the leo's flesh underneath - and it didn't seem to mind that it lacked limbs of its own. In fact, it seemed content with working its rough, long black tongue like a wormy finger. It wasted no time in sliding the shiny appendage between its mesh of needle teeth, darting to capture every acidic drop that fell from the churning sky.
At last, the vestiges of illusionary magicks fell away from the pair. The leo spoke to his reptilian cohort without looking its way, his tone carefully neutral.
"That little prank you pulled wasn't as clever as you might have thought, you know."
Even as she tried to offer up a sincere pout, the snake couldn't contain her chuckle. "I was only breaking the ice. You wanted to get her attention, didn't you?"
"Lucky for you Miss Spy wasn't very inclined to ask too many questions. Before that moment, I had gone over our meeting countless times in my head. I had memorized how I would move, and act...but then you had to "break the ice." Because of you I had to improvise the entire encounter. You could have complicated matters."
"Since when have you made it a habit to bemoan things that never were?"
"Don't change the subject."
"Admit it, you enjoyed the show," she said with a smile. "Besides, I gave you the perfect excuse to make your presence known. And I seriously doubt she would have asked anything your blinding wit couldn't evade. As stunned she looked, I would've been surprised if she had said anything more articulate than "uhhh..."
"Pagan...." A quiet note of warning had entered his dusty voice. "You deliberately went against my wishes. You remember my wishes, don't you, Pagan?"
Millennia of constantly interacting with her host had accustomed Pagan's delicate, leathery ears to certain cues in his voice. It also helped that she was physically a part of him; she knew her host's mood and temperament through the murmurs of his heart, the intake of breath, the pressure of his blood in his veins, the tension of his muscles. In the end, her connection went deeper than the flesh, but stopped short of his innermost mind. She never knew his exact thoughts, but it was a rare day that she didn't know how those thoughts made him feel.
As she opened her mouth to answer him, she knew there was no real weight behind his displeasure. It was all just a game.
"Come now, Chimera, how could I forget your wishes, they were quite clear. You told me and Az to "keep still, and keep quiet." You told us not to do anything that might dispel our illusory guise and alert the girl, Trish. "She knows every species, every race of the Underworld by sight," you said..."
"Except us," the creature called Az piped in. "She won't know us, us unknown. Questions, questions, bad questions will she ask. Special us, special, special, special...."
Az trailed off as a deceptively glassy look fell across his ruby eyes. Suddenly the dull expression erupted in a manic grin of needles. He went back to catching raindrops. When he spoke again, it was around the seemingly independent efforts of his rain-obsessed tongue.
"Well? Nightmares to make and promises to break. What does time think? Will there be enough?"
Pagan took her cue and gently squeezed her host's bicep. "Az is right," she said. "We are running short on time, now. He'll be here soon."
Chimera regarded Pagan for a moment, knowing she was right. He took one last, slow look around. He was a witness to the twilight, a turning of time with great significance. The curtains of rain were a tattered sprinkle of their former selves. Dark clouds exhausted of rain continued to roil, as if the stuttered bursts of lightning inside them were cause for pain. Thunder tolled like a behemoth's growl, deep and resonating. The demon stood.
Despite a good shake to rid himself of the torrent's weight, he was still very much a wet demon. This was fine. While he didn't need all the tainted water, some would serve as a necessary component to summon the Nightmares.
Behind him, Az had grown quietly alert. They were about to get to work. This meant good things in the near future.
Pagan was in a similar state of anticipation. The Nightmares, once set, would delay the hunter long enough for Mundus to finish preparing the stage for his execution. After that, world domination. Pagan grinned sardonically.
I don't think soooo.
Trismagia, Oracle of the Underworld, had foreseen much of the immediate future, including what Mundus's conceit would earn him. In his place, another was meant to occupy the throne... The she-serpent drew close to Chimera's ear, restrained excitement in every word.
"Lord Argosax will be pleased."
"Indeed, he will," Chimera grinned. "We have much to tell him, all of it good."
"Finally, after all this time..." said Pagan, her gaze a touch predatory.
Az suddenly broke into fits of hysterical laughter. "The fun had just begun! Promises to break and Kingdoms to make! Can't wait, can't wait!"
Chimera was in total agreement, but being the sensible demon that he was, he wasn't about to jump and dance just yet. The war was ongoing, and Argosax had not risen to power...yet. Oh yes, this was going to work. When Munuds was gone, and the Chaos ruled, the real game would begin...
"Promises to break..." Chimera murmured to himself with a hard, cunning smile. He remembered how he had given the Lord of Shapes his undying oath of loyalty and servitude, and the smile only grew. He inclined his head, glancing at his familiars with an intensity that only clairvoyants and masterminds could pull off.
"Here we go!"
And they were gone.
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A/N: The classical chimera was said to have had a lion's head and body, a goat's head on its back, and a snake, or dragon for a tail. This fire breathing monster was also said to be female, even though it possessed the mane of a male. The best representation of classical chimera is a large statue called the "Chimera of Arezzo." And that concludes this edumacational moment.
So what's going to happen next, you might be wondering? Well since I haven't decided yet, I'm wondering along with you. I may have Dante fight a Nightmare... Or maybe I'll introduce the Frosts...? What about a chapter on Vergil's POV eh? One thing is certain, though, Trish had her moment, and now it's someone else's turn in the spotlight.