Inky blackness clouded his vision in an unfeeling, oppressive void of darkness. His lungs were burning, screaming for respite. His eyes stung as though someone had used a spoon to remove them. His limbs ached; his heart pounded; and fear coursed through his veins. Flashes of inhuman and certainly Demonic entities would pear out of the darkness. A long, serpentine limb here. The glinting of a red eye with a bulging, yellow pupil there. Black waves coated in a malicious, seething, and hungry rage poured over his body.
He was floating further and further downward as an evil force came to collect his very soul. Dante had felt fear before. He had felt an unmatched and all-powerful terror when his mother was murdered before him. He felt that same fear when Mundus goons had stolen away Kat from him. He had felt that exact same horror when he nearly killed his brother.
Yet this fear... This darkness was... Was different. It was weaker. It was panicking. It, too, was fearful. It-
Something tore through the flesh of his back, slithering around his limbs, pulling him deeper, and deeper, and deeper into the dread darkness. He saw it then. What the darkness truly was. Dante had seen Demons before. Hell, he'd Killed hundreds of them. He had seen pure evil in the three red eyes of the Demon King Mundus. He'd encountered true evil too many times to count. But this darkness... This... This was indescribable evil. Something ancient. Something that feeds upon despair and chaos and leaves nothing but ashes in it's wake.
Within this darkness dwelled a flaming evil. It took the shape of a man and a pair of angelic wings extended from it's back. It's body was nothing but red Hellfire, and it's eyes glowed a light, welcoming blue. It reached out for him with long, boney fingers and a voice spoke to him. He could not hear it, and even if he did he would not understand it. For Dante could only see one thing. A massive maw full of hundreds of spinning sets of fangs. Each fang was the size of a small building, jagged and snow white, and drenched in ancient blood. The darkness desired to feast.
Dante's limbs could not obey him, his mind was growing faint, and his heart began to slow it's beating. His vision faded, the Flaming Angel's ice cold fingers began to wrap around his amulet, and thousands of whip-like tongues the color of steel slowly drew forth from the maw. This was the end... This is how Dante would die. Alone in the darkness, betrayed by his brother, with the only witness being a Demonic Angel that may not even exist. It was... Funny, in a fucked up kinda way.
Dante's life had never been kind. His mother was murdered when he was eight, his father abandoned him when he was nine, and he had spent the rest of his life being hunted by Demons and cops. He had nearly died too many times to count. He had lost friends, lost family, lost lovers. He had only himself and his hatred against the darkness to rely on as his only constant. They called him crazy. They tried to kill him. They tortured and broke his body. They stole away his childhood, robbed him of a home, and now the darkness seeks to steal away his last chance? No. Not today, not ever.
Dante let his rage consume him. He let that which dwelled within awaken. He had It on a short leash, yet now was one of those rare opportunities to cut lose. The darkness that had sought to kill him for so long also thrived within his very blood, left unchecked for many years. It had been festering and growing and strengthening. And now... Now was the time to fight fire with fire.
The world became a muted grey, dark clouds swirled up above, and the laws of gravity and time became flexible. Breakable. His coat flushed red with Demonic Power, and his eyes became oily black save for blood red irises. Dante broke free from the grasp of the darkness and that Angelic hallucination faded away into nonexistence. He heard a deep, throaty growl echoing throughout the darkness as even more yellow orbs began to shine through the darkness. Dante felt one of those inky black tendrils tighten around his leg, and than he was flung away at supersonic speeds.
He couldn't tell if he was going up, down, straight or backwards. All around him echoed the growls of something big. Very, very, very big. Shapes and eyes lurked beyond sight in the darkness. And Dante even with his Devil Trigger released could do nothing as-
The sounds of steel being torn asunder assaulted his ears like the cries of Mundus child. Pain enveloped his back even further and all he could see was rusted, forgotten metals flying by at speeds no human could survive. Dante, in a moment of desperation, conjured forth his Angelic whip and launched its hook forth. It snagged something and he was quickly pulled upwards towards a metallic ceiling. A single kick was enough to tear through the old steel.
Dante landed on his stomach, pain rattling his head, and heavy rainfall coating him in dark waters. His body was burning with exhaustion and pain. As mighty as the Devil Trigger is even It had It's limits. Still, pain was nothing new to the young Nephilim. Pain and Dante were old friends, you see...
Dante placed his right hand on the slippery, wet metal below him and conjured forth the Rebellion with his left. Impaled the tip of his shape shifting weapon into the ground, and used it to help him stand. Once that was complete he looked straight ahead and saw a black ocean. No ships, no sea life, no color. Just a oily black, raging sea. The waters were angry, furious, pissed off. Dante hacked up mouthfuls of that black water as a storm raged up above. The only source of light in this darkness was the occasional flash of lightning. The winds howled like a starving predator, monstrous waves would rise, and this storm only continued to grow.
A low, groaning moan echoed across the waters as Dante surveyed his surroundings. An old, long forgotten, and damaged military vessel of some sort. It resembled the old Destroyer ships used by America in WW 2, minus the massive cannons and with a hint of syfy esque technology. The ship shook and quaked from the uncaring sea and... And another groaning moan echoed. Dante looked back towards the sea, eyes peeled and closely searching for anything alive in those otherworldly waters.
That he saw. Several hundred feet away something began to stir. The water bubbled and shook and split apart like a whirlpool as it arose. A oily black tentacle covered in boney spikes and protrusions. Some of said spikes were adorned with wrecked vessels, and others had the corpses of whales and other massive beasts impaled onto it. The tentacle just kept rising and rising and rising. It was the size of the Empire State Building in length, and three times as thick. Dante could only look on in shock as the tentacle reared back and prepared to strike. And, as it did, Dante called upon the Osiris, and leapt out of the way using his Angel Boost. That alone wouldn't be enough to save him, no, but he only utilized it to get some air time. Whilst in the air he called upon the Ophion Whip, and snagged one of the ships caught on the tentacle. He kicked through a pair of bullet resistant glass windows as the tentacle utterly obliterated the ship he was standing on mere moments ago. The sheer mass displaced by the tentacle was enough to create a miniature tsunami that would be felt for miles around.
Dante landed in a control room of some kind. Several skeletons were sprawled about wearing tattered and grayed clothing. Dante didn't have much time to investigate as the ship he landed began to shake violently. Much smaller tentacles managed to snake their way inside, some tearing holes into the iron walls of the vessel, and some entering in from behind Dante the same way he got in. The largest of these tentacles was nearly twenty feet long, and half that in thickness.
Dante conjured forth the Angelic shurikens Aquila. Dante prepared himself for a moment, waiting for the tentacles to near, and he unleashed his Angelic Power in the form of a vortex of death. He spun at lightning fast speeds and coated his body in holy magic, making ever touch lethal and agonizing, and the black blood of the tentacles began to spray as another, louder groan echoed across the sea.
One reared back and attempted to strike him from above, so Dante quickly opened a portal and dashed into it. The portal opened above the limb, and Dante came down like a hammer, slicing the limb off with the Rebellion.
As soon as he landed Dante morphed the Rebellion into the Osiris, and slashed diagonally to eviscerate another limb. He swapped out the scythe for the Eryx, grabbing ahold of two limb and ripping them off, and sending a Hellfire infused right hook towards another tentacle, splattering it against the wall. He manifested the Rebellion in his left hand grabbed Ebony, his black handgun, with his right. He sent a slash of Demonic Energy twoards three tentacles and blasted four others with Ebony. The Demonic Power tore through both the limbs and the bowels of the vessel, whilst Ebony exploded the tendrils it's bullets touched.
The tentacles squirmed and quickly retracted from whence they came... And their blood began to bubble and boil. Dante summoned the Arbiter as a clawed hand reached up from a spreading pool of oily blood. Then an arm came, and several tendrils a few feet in length, followed by a grotesque head. The head was an amalgamation of an eel, a hammerhead shark, and possessed the eyes of a squid. The body that followed the head was scaley and bumpy and a whitish blue in color. The creature's eyes glowed yellow. It was clear that while someone was home, no lights were on upstairs.
It lashed out with a sluggish clawed strike, and Dante vivisected it with a single strike of the Devil axe. Yet more of those fish-faced fuckers rose from the blood of the tentacles. Two... Four... Seven... Twelve. This should be fun.
In a flash of light Dante summoned the Osiris, and swung out horizontally. Three were cut in half, and one knocked into a iron wall hard enough to be embedded in the metal. Dante followed up with a vertical slash that cut through another wannabe sea monster like butter. He crouched low, channeling his Angelic Power into the weapon, and waited for sluggish Demons to near. They did, slowly, but they did. And once they came in arms length Dante leapt upwards, swinging his scythe like a madman, and slicing and dicing the beasties with ease.
Heads fell, arms were dismembered, and bloody intestines splattered against the walls of the old ship. A few wounded ones survived, and more birthed from the blood. Dante cursed, pulling free the silverish white Ivory and black Ebony pistols. He used his expert precision to blow the brains out of six of them, and then he came down with Eryx. The gauntlets turned the floor into a festering pit of Hellfire, incinerating both the Hellspawn and the Devil blood.
However, as this transpired, the ship began to quake and Dante found his back hitting the ceiling as more of the beasties crawled forth from the windows, torn hull, and from the black recesses of the ship. Water began pouring in through the holes and shattered glass as the colossal tentacle started to submerge itself in the black waters again. It wanted the Nephilim to drown or be torn limb for limb. Dante smilied. He liked it rough.
Dante quickly rolled to his feet and practically threw himself through the shattered windows. Once in the damp, cold rain he utilized the Angel Boost to launch himself nearly a hundred feet into the sky. Not even a second later three tendrils the size of freight trains erupted from the seas like angry leviathans. Each arm possessed a maw filled with rows and rows and rows of needle-like fangs that spun similarly to buzzsaws. They were more akin to gargantuan worms than the limbs of an overgrown cephalopod.
Dante kicked the first with enough force to break the sound barrier and the thing's jaw. Dante used his Demon whip to pull another, slamming into it's hide with the Arbiter. The limb gushed out blood and released a hellish screech, squirming and thrashing like a mad dog. Dante held onto his father's axe, planting his feet down, and raised his left arm as he summoned the Devil Gun Kablooey. The other tendril had reared back, mouth agape, and it was not more than a few dozen feet away. Dante smirked.
Several red spikes were launched into the mouth of the thing, eliciting a hissing cry. Under normal circumstances the Kablooey would be little more than an annoyance to something of this size. But, you see, Demonic Power feeds upon hatred and pain to grow stronger. And right now, Dante had both in spades.
The resulting explosion consumed the head of the tentacle, and unleashed a shockwave strong to rip apart the midsection of the tendril he had stationed himself upon. The resulting blood drenched Dante, discolored the air, and caused the entirety of the ocean to enter into a frenzy. Whirlpools began to form, tidal waves were formed, and the waters became blacker and blacker and blacker as something began to move. Something swam upward. Something old, no, prehistoric. Something malicious and fully aware of what it was doing.
Dante had seen giants before. Demons the size skyscrapers. Devils big enough to eat entire houses in a few bites. But this? This was... Truly big.
The black waters parted way as massive boney fangs the size of mountains emerged. Eyes big enough to be small Islands surfaced with building sized red pupils. Tentacles big enough to sink entire continents emerged from the inky depths, followed by claw-like appendages and a maw. The maw alone could devour entire islands whole, and it packed hundreds of thousands of rows of circular fangs all of which spun like drills. Tongues big enough to each sink a mountain emerged, forked and the color of blood.
Thousands of vessels throughout hundreds of years of humanity's existence littered the body of the this titanic leviathan. Chuncks of continents long forgotten hung from it's body, some of which contained extinct civilizations and lost legends. The beast's head was a cross between a squid, a crocodile, and a eel with two main eyes that sat on opposite sides of the giant's head. Each eye was blood red in color with a relatively small pupil that glowed the color of fire. Those eyes were smart, malicious, and hateful. It wanted Dante dead.
Dante stared up at it in shock. His mouth was agape, the stench of a million rotting carcasses hitting his nose, and the beast raised it's wounded limb up to one of it's blood red eyes. Dante steeled himself as an idea entered into his mind. He grined.
"Ya know," he said as the storm raged and lightning thundered, "I don't think I've seen a squid as big as you before. Whatcha ya name, big fella? Do they the kraken? Leviathan? Or mr. tentacles?" There wasn't the usual vulgar response Dante had expected. Most Devils were rather talkative when angry. Not this guy, apparently.
"So, why all the way out here? You guys usually prefer cities. What changed? Have I been killing too many of you now? Or are you just a big pussy? Too scared of me? Or did ya become my little bro's bitch like the others?" No response. The beast only pulsed and watched and squirmed. That irritated the Demon Killer. It was one thing when they wouldn't shut the fuck up like ol' Bob. It was another if they couldn't speak like the Tyrants or Stygians. But, what pissed off the young Nephilim the most was when they choose not to speak and ignore him.
"Cat got your tongue? I know, I know. I'm such a smokin' sexy badass that most lose their voice around me. Or are you too retarded to talk? Or... Hold on, are you scared? You, a giant fucking squid the size of an island, scared of little ol' me? Am I really that spooky, little fella?" Again there was nothing. Now he was going from mildly annoyed to very, very, very angry. Dante drew the Arbiter free with one hand and pointed at the beast with his free arm.
"Fine. You wanna play the silent game, I'll just make you into a name on the damn census!" He transformed the Arbiter into the Rebellion, and unleashed a shockwave of Devil Power. It sliced into one of leviathan's smaller set of eyes, blinding them. The beast let our an ear shattering roar loud enough to kill any normal human in a twelve mile radius. Yet, to Dante, this was but a slight annoyance.
The beast's maw opened wide, tentacles squirming and rising and sinking, and Dante ran forward using the length of the limb he stood on to build momentum. A few seconds passed before he leapt several hundred feet into the air, and used his Angel Boost to dash into the beast's gaping maw. He called up the power of the Angelic Ophion and snagged a jagged fang. He used the whip like a rope, propelling himself even further, and he used another Angel Boost to force himself into the beast's throat.
"This is a gonna be a crazy party! Let's rock!"
Dracul1789 — I do believe that most of the old boys hated DmC primarily because El Donte wasn't identical to Dante. I think they forgot the premise of a reboot.
Admittedly, Ninja Theory and especially Tameem didn't help. Their was shit thrown around on both sides, such as the infamous presentation with Dante photoshopped into Broken Back Mountain, and the whole "What was cool then isn't cool now" thing.
I do honestly think El Donte could have been great had he been given an extra sequel or two. Hell, even Itsuno wanted DmC 2 more than DMC 5.
Anyway, in regards to the power thing... Yeah, this chapter speaks for itself in that regard.
And, to anyone else reading, comment whatever you want. I will answer any and all questions. See ya in... Like a year, when I finally upload chapter 3.
