Chapter 7

In this world, the idea of Hell misinterprets its actual purpose. When a person dies, their soul escapes their body and the presence of the person becomes pure thought. It looks back on its life through vivid memory. At the same time, this consciousness has pure insight of the previous life's actions and completely understands the pains they may have caused to others in relation to the good they've done for others. In many cases, they feel infinite remorse for their actions and send themselves to a realm or suffering and pain… Hell.

In similar words: in this world, the people believe that Hell is a place God sends souls to punish them for the wrong doings for their lives, but it's more like God shows the souls what they've done and they willingly punish themselves in a separate realm. The realm is made up of the limits of a person's imagination. The greater the remorse, the greater the pain they cause themselves. The world was looked over by Lucifer, the mourning star, and his fellow fallen angels, cherubs and muses as was decreed by the God of this universe. In this realm, the thought of pain is a reality and is physical while matter and physics become purely subjective.

Magic is the conscious manipulation of the laws of physics. People are able to tap into that realm of pure thought and bring it into the physical realm making the universe bend to the will of a magic caster. One such person who has tapped into this realm is Ishmael Gregor. He taps into the power of the fallen angels of this hellish realm and is fueled by the infinity of pain and suffering that is Hell.

Right at this very moment, Nightwing's laying down at the mercy of the monstrosity. To top it off, Nightwing banished Ishmael to the depths of Hell during their last encounter, so it's quite understandable that Sabbac is going to want to make this personal.

"Mr. Grayson… it's been a time since we've last seen each other," booms the multi-tonal guttural voice of the demon floating feet away from him. "If you'll please give me a minute, my friend, I'll be continuing this little reunion we've started. Unfortunately, business precedes pleasure."

Coughing on the edge of the pool of blood, Brother Blood slowly rolls over to see the hero who nearly killed him. With as much rage as his tired body and lungs could muster, he screams, "You see? You can't win against me." He then looks at Sabbac and orders "Kill him, now."

The red pigmented villain floats toward the prone body of Brother Blood. "You're proving to be more trouble than you're worth little one." With a huge hand, Ishmael grabs the leg of the would-be dictator and holds him upside-down. "You're only needed to father a son with the daughter of Trigon… your plan to brainwash the Justice League was tolerated… maybe even anticipated for entertainment, but you keep risking everything, including your own life." Sabbac leans down and grabs Blood by his leg. With no effort, he holds his whole blood stained frame as high as he can so that Blood could surely see his own seriousness.

"What do you think you're doing? You can't talk to me that way!" Blood screams as if he thinks it would have an effect; however Nightwing and Sabbac both know it does not. When a person like Ishmael Gregor receives the powers of a god, hierarchy is just a word. He'll do whatever he wants; however he wants to; to whoever he wants.

"Trigon just needs you to produce an offspring." Then, smiling the broadest smile imaginable, the crimson demon said, "Fortunately, there are limited body parts required for your survival and reproduction." With that, an ungodly crunch sound is heard in the Sabbac's closed fist holding the leg of Brother Blood. A cry of pain reverberates throughout the chamber. In an instant, the leader of a cult becomes a weeping teenager.

He slowly floats up, high above Nightwing. Soon, Baron Blood can't be seen, but his scream echoes.

Then there is silence.

A red dot descends from above. It holds nothing. Then there is the familiar bellowing voice. He speaks the words: "That keeps our mutual friend occupied. Now it's time that we reacquaint ourselves."

Nightwing forces himself up to his feet. He feels a familiar sting behind his thigh. He has a broken his tibia. Shattered collar. Dislocated shoulder. Three broken ribs. Heat burns across his midsection. Bleeding from numerous deep cuts across his face and throat. The mother of all headaches. Nightwing walks over to the altar and pulls a two foot bone off. He stands as still as he can as Sabbac finally reaches ground level.

Sabbac finally sees Nightwing in an offensive stance and chuckles, "I can't tell if you're a cosmonaut or a обезьяна."

With his good leg, Nightwing leaps and swings down with the bone. Just before it makes contact with Sabbac's grin, he disappears and then reappears behind him with his arms folded and laughing in the most arrogant of ways.

With lightning speed, Nightwing turns around and lunges at Sabbac. Sabbac grabs Nightwing's wrists with the simplest of gestures and tosses him toward Blood's throne. Nightwing hits it hard enough to topple it. With a matter of fact tone, Sabbac continues, "Can you imagine what hell is like?" Dick's response is struggling to get up from the throne.

The words come out, "It feels a lot like this," and Ishmael releases a mouthful of flame on Nightwing's legs. Nightwing collapses down on the ground as the pain fills his body so much, he can no longer isolate the location of the pain. Of coarse he screams, as well, but the sound is drowned out with the pain.

"It's not like other fire. Real fire would kill nerve receptors. You'd no longer feel it after a while. This fire is just pure agony. Can you imagine that pain for an eternity? Personally, I was given invulnerability, but even I wasn't immune to that fire."

Sabbac smile ends as a serious face comes to him. "And you sent me there." Sabbac lets loose another blast of fire engulfing his chest and arms. After three seconds of torture, Sabbac stops.

Nightwing looks up and throws the bone at Sabbac. Sabbac lets it bounce off his forehead. Sabbac rolls his eyes and says, "Definitely a обезьяна."

Sabbac flies up to Nightwing to just within an inch of Nightwing and grins. He presses a huge clawed hand on the shattered collarbone of Nightwing. Nightwing screams. His left arm grabs the huge fist while his right hand grabs a thick black goatee on the demon's face and pulls. Nothing.

Sabbac looks down and says, "You see? This is why I was angered by that izverg up there." Sabbac takes his other hand and extends his pinky finger… equipped with a claw like nail.

He inserts the nail into Dick's stomach and twists. "The best way to break you is through her… you'd be surprised what I could do to her. I almost got her too. That one hero is fast…" Sabbac leans in closely to Nightwing and whispers, "It doesn't matter you know. She isn't safe. I will get her." That phrase got Nightwing to throw the rest of his strength into a right hook across his face. The impact came back through his hand and broke his knuckles.

"That's the обезьяна I want to see!"

Nightwing looks back and with great effort asks, "What the hell does that mean?"

Sabbac removes his hand from Nightwing's stomach and places an open palm on Nightwing's forearm and slowly adds pressure until a snap is heard.

Over the wail, Sabbac exclaims matter-of-fact, "You see, we regarded our 'space men' as the bravest men in our country. We also trained monkeys do the same job. The monkeys were as successful as the cosmonauts and the cosmonauts lived the ridicule of having the bravery and intelligence of monkeys. Of coarse the difference is that the monkey didn't know he was strapped to a spaceship that could burn any minute… so we call fools who look brave 'обезьяны'."

Through the tears and his head hanging down, Nightwing asks Sabbac, "Then what do you do to someone that's about to be hit really hard?"

Instantly, a blue streak flies in and hits Sabbac across the jaw.

Nothing can stop Sabbac from doing what he wants… so the solution is to change his wants. It's been Nightwing's little trick for ages. Always anger and distract with words and actions to keep them focused on the kid taunting kid in the bright colored clothes. Keep their minds off the innocent, keep them concentrating on hurting you, make them forget anything else but causing you pain. Wait for the big guns can come and do their thing… sometimes it's the only way to win.

Sabbac flies back ten feet and up twelve. Sabbac realizes what happened and flies into the blue blur. Over the course of five seconds, Sabbac and Superman fight around the room at such a speed that Nightwing could only see a few sparse holds.

After the five seconds, Sabbac held Superman against the ground. Sabbac's left forearm was pressing hard against the back of Superman's neck. Sabbac's eyes were aflame with yellow light and a grin across his face. A trickle of black blood lined the side of his chin.

"This is a high point of my day."

Superman kicks against the ground flying high into the air out of sight. When they land, Superman is above him throwing a right hand into the face of the demon. The two make a huge indentation into the ground of the throne room. The blood from the surrounding pool leaks into the hole surrounding the two powerhouses as they pound at each other furiously.

Superman throws a haymaker, Sabbac throws an uppercut. Superman swings his two fists onto Sabbac's head. Sabbac takes the hit and grabs Superman's leg and throws him against a side wall. Superman stops himself and flies toward Sabbac with lightning speed which takes Sabbac across the room into the wall. Superman throws a blurry mesh of fists into Sabbac.

Superman begins to let up, but Sabbac reaches his left hand out and grabs him by the neck. With his right hand, Sabbac punches Superman's jaw. Sabbac doesn't let go of Superman's throat and continues to pummel. Superman looks up and flares heat vision burning away all of Sabbac's hair, Sabbac counters by blowing hellfire into Superman's face.

Superman never cried out in pain as much as he does as the flames engulf his head. Every pain he has ever felt was rolled into one burst of agony.

"Hellfire's pretty painful, isn't it? No one is immune to it."

Sabbac knows he can really hurt… maybe even kill Superman. When they brought his comatose body, he used him as a punching dummy to truly test the limits of his newfound strength. After a few minutes, he began to show the strength of power of Satan is stronger than he previously assumed. He hits Superman five more times and Superman goes down. Sabbac stands above him pounding down on deeper into the earth, unaware of the proximity of the altar.

Nightwing finally gets up from the throne. The pain is almost overcoming him. He teeters over to the altar. Nightwing collapses on the altar and pushes with all the strength in his good leg. The sharp fragments along the edge fall on the back of Sabbac. The collapsing altar rolls off an immovable Sabbac. But it gets his attention. Sabbac turns around to see a young, swollen, bleeding Nightwing stand two feet away from him… flicking him off would Nightwing do that?. Sabbac in turn gets up off the man of steel and walks toward Nightwing. He raises his hand and… a huge golden streak comes out of nowhere slamming into Sabbac.

"Perhaps now, you will test your god's gifts against mine?"

Wonder Woman pummels Sabbac with abandon and fury. Sabbac hits back once for every three hits Wonder Woman gets in. Nightwing in turn falls to his backside as the impact from the blows pushes the paper thin forte of Nightwing.

Instantly, a large gray and black figure stops right next to Nightwing. He picks the prone hero in his arms and runs.

"Sabbac?" Wally yells in an almost incomprehensible speed. "You tried to take on Sabbac by yourself? Why didn't you tell me? I could have grabbed both you and the girl, you didn't have to take on Sabbac! That was just stupid on your part! I could have outraced him to the end of the Earth and back! You didn't have to…"

His rambling was silenced by Nightwing raising his hand. "When he realized you were too fast for him, he would have stopped in the middle of a metropolitan area and started doing damage there for spite. I had to try to keep him contained in the base… threatening Brother Blood was the only way to bring him back… torturing me was the only thing keeping him there."

After a moments pause… probably an eternity of thinking for the Flash, Wally responds, "I'm sure there were other ways."

They stop inside a transporter device in the one of the cities it looked momentarily like Star City and then are in the Watchtower medical bay. Dr. Midnight is there with rubber gloves on his hands looking over the alien child. "What happened?" The good doctor asks.

The Flash looks up and responds, "Doesn't matter… Fix him."

Nightwing called out to Flash to return to the fight. Flash looks at a nearby monitor, up at Midnight, over to the baby and back to Nightwing. He leaves for a second and is back instantaneously with a stool. He sits down and says, "Are you kidding? This is the Justice League. No one person can take out the Justice League by themselves."

And Wally West is right. A few minutes into the fight, Arthur suggests that the source of Sabbac's strength is the base itself. With a thought, Green Lantern flies into the chamber and drags Sabbac into the light. Batman still in the Flash uniform takes the suggestion further by ordering Superman to drag him to Atlantis. With protests from Arthur, the League drags Sabbac to the depths of the ocean where his powers are drained by the magical properties of Atlantis. They further pound on Sabbac until eventually, he succumbs to the forces against him and collapses in the middle of the ocean.

Well, all that's left is the Epilogue which is actually the first thing I wrote, but have to correct because of the changes I made during writing this story. I hope you all enjoyed my first story ever written on-line. Thank you to all who wrote reviews, compliments and suggestions. I will be making some changes over time grammar and the Wonder Woman fight with a lasso and will be displaying them under the title 2ne edit… final edit. Suggestions are appreciated.

I'm writing a prologue to a Batman story called Back to the Beginning's Edge which I hope will go better than this one. Again, I would never put this story in continuity and am writing it for my own amusement. Thank you for your time.

One a side note--- which chapter has the best style for setting up the story and titling the chapters? Just asking.