Credo is made of stress and doing his best.

Nero, meanwhile, is having a bad time in the past, present, and future.

The fact that I was the only one who needed to carry a torch irritated me beyond all reason. Damn inhuman Capulets.

"Could there have been more cobwebs in that passage?" Dante was saying with no concern for our need to avoid being caught, not that anyone was likely to notice our presence in the vault.

I'd never been down the passage, but I'd known of it from a young age, and my parents had told me that it was attached to a sealed room. They'd never used the words "vault" or "storage," and judging by the fact that I recognized most of the objects within, I had a guess that most of the contents had been moved there some twenty years before. The dust but minimal wear suggested as much.

"I think I might have actually eaten some spiders," Dante kept on, trying to ruffle the strands of webs from his hair.

"You wanted to lead," Vergil said as he cracked open an old chest. I couldn't see what lay inside with the heavy shadows the torch cast, but it must not have been much of interest because Vergil let the chest fall shut. "Might the rings be in here?" he asked. "Not a well-kept space, but I'd imagine them being with the other relics."

"I don't believe so," I said. "They're kept in specific boxes with the family crest on them, and I don't see anything like that here. Sanctus gave me my set, so I would imagine he has the others or at least knows where they are. I'd rather not waste too much time looking here."

Dante set to poking about regardless. "We should have kept the masks," he said, grinning. "Then we could have been proper thieves."

He wasn't supposed to be having fun.

"Is this the king?" Vergil asked. I had to carry the torch closer to him to see what he was talking about - an old portrait, but one I recalled well. Even as Vergil shifted it to look at the others behind it, I didn't need to see them to know what they showed.

"I wouldn't have expected those to be kept," I said. "Perhaps they're still around for the same reason I am."

"Some sort of insurance?" Vergil surmised. "A fallback plan?"

I nodded. "I'm certain Sanctus and the others expected to have more control over me." Had I not known them to be involved in the plot against my parents, perhaps I would have been a more dutiful puppet.

"Oh, that would have been a fun story," Dante said with a laugh. "The long-dead prince returns. It's a miracle."

That did make me wonder if they had always been uneasy about Nero, if they'd always expected for something to go wrong with him. Or if they'd always anticipated killing him.

"I suppose I'll need to come back and sort through all this," I said. "Some things will need to be burned."

Curiosity shone in Vergil's eyes. "You're so willing to erase the past? Even all record of your parents?"

"The past does no good for me anymore. Better to protect Nero's mindset than to dwell."

A nice way to say I would let him believe a lie forever if I could.

"But we should get going," I said. Though the princes acquiesced with nods, the king remained as still and silent as he'd become since we arrived. I was so accustomed to hearing him chatter that I'd almost forgotten his presence.

"Think too hard, Dad?" Dante asked, finally breaking the king from his staring match with the ground. "Pull something?"

Sparda's brow remained furrowed as he turned to his sons. "You do not feel it?"

"Feel what?" Dante asked.

"Perhaps I'm imagining it, then." Seeing Sparda without his easygoing smile made his words ring hollow. "I do tend to grow uneasy near gates."

"We're near the gate?" Vergil's tone was sharp with a demand for something I could not fathom. Before I could ask for an explanation or he could receive an answer, a muffled squeak of hinges and a crash of a door slamming shut set us all into a frozen silence. Like I'd forgotten how to walk, I had to force my legs to inch toward the door between us and whoever had arrived. Even before I pressed my ear to it, I could hear him muttering up a storm in the adjacent room.

"Agnus," I said as low as a growl.

The way Dante's eyes reflected dark even in the torchlight made me realize my mistake. "We don't need him, right?" he asked. The edge in his voice could have torn through a man, and both his father and brother looked to him with knowing glares.

"Agnus can be avoided," I said only because we were short on time. "He is of little import for now."

Alongside the mildew and dust clogging the air came the scent of a fledgling fire, like smoke had crowded the room without warning. "No," Dante said. "We don't need him alive, do we?"

I should never have told them that portion of the past.

No one answered him. I felt that if any of us tried to, the air would catch fire. No words could stifle the rage seething from the prince. Vergil and Sparda exchanged a glance that must have held some meaning. The crown prince looked irked, his father pleading.

Another distant door slammed shut, shattering the tense air as Dante strode up beside me and kicked the door open with a thunderous applause of shattering wood and screeching metal.

Well, so much for going unnoticed.

"Son," Sparda called with a sigh as he too rushed past me to follow Dante. Vergil crossed his arms as well as he could with his sword in one hand and shook his head before starting after his family. Unlike them, though, he wasn't in much of a rush.

"Seems we've announced our arrival," he said.

I had no choice but to tag along with them, dropping off my torch in one of the holders outside the door in case I needed it on the way back.

Even as Sparda attempted to talk to his son as though trying to reason with a rattlesnake, I couldn't help but wonder if I should let Dante kill Agnus. Death was the least of what Agnus deserved, but he may have still had some use, some information I'd never been able to pry from him. In that case, I did need him alive.

Besides, if anyone was going to kill that bastard, I wanted it to be me.

We must have still had some luck on our side because the first room was empty. Though it smelled of blood, sweat, and agony, no one hung from the chains along the walls or cowered away behind cell doors. I felt certain that was not usually the case. I'd seen many men dragged away to the dungeons. Hundreds, thousands perhaps.

Though I'd never seen the room myself, it fit well to the description I'd heard years before in a weak, trembling voice. "There's a big room first," Nero had said. "It keeps going forever. There's lots of metal on the walls. It's so cold."

The more he'd spoken, the closer he'd pressed to me, his whole form shaking as though caught in some fit. His eyes were the worst of it, fading to empty fear and making me regret every question I asked. But I kept asking because he made so little sense beyond his initial explanations. The moment I tried to move him beyond the first room, things fell apart. He would say the same things each time before falling to an icy, panicked silence.

"That's the room where things hurt. The ground is missing. It's dark. Stuff gets eaten. Falls in and gone. Everything hurts. Hurts. Hurts."

Until he was a shaking mess whom I had to hold in my arms so that he could find some form of restless, hazy sleep.

That was the room ahead, the one Vergil somehow reached before his brother. I swore he'd been just ahead of me moments before. "Don't go causing anymore unnecessary destruction, Dante," was all Vergil said before he slipped inside. Dante chased his heels, and their father heaved another sigh as he followed.

I was the last one to enter, and truthfully, I found the room underwhelming. I wasn't sure what could have lived up to my endless wondering over its contents, but shelving, bottles, and what appeared to be lateral versions of a torture rack were not my idea of the horrors I'd seen behind Nero's eyes.

The floor, though - something was wrong with the floor. A circle the length of two beds across was cut into the stone. Despite the room's many contents, nothing rested atop the metal covering over that area. The plates fit together in the center like a steel jaw with jagged teeth.

If the ground could go "missing" there, if it could open up, I feared what might be under it.

Across from us, Agnus, too, took up space in the room and was decidedly underwhelming. Rather than frightened or concerned, he glanced over us with clear annoyance. "Credo," he said as though my name tasted rotten. "You're alive."

"You would be wise to watch your words," I said. "You've gotten yourself on the bad side of some people with less of a mind to keep you alive than I, and my tolerance is worn quite thin."

Dante hadn't gone for the man's throat yet. With his brother a few paces in front of him and his father a few behind, he must have been trapped somehow, but he was still taut as a bowstring.

"Well, what do you want?" Agnus snarled through his ticking words. "Do you have some purpose in bothering me?" The fact that he showed no concern over four men with swords made me wonder if he had some trick I needed to worry about. Agnus was nothing if not a nervous wreck, yet he held only contempt for us.

As if to remind Agnus of his position, Dante slipped the sword from his back and rested its tip on the ground. Dante's gaze idly flicked over the sword as he spoke. "We have a lot to cover, but for starters, I hear you're the one who made Nero take that poison."

Agnus scoffed. "Is it really poison to him if he can withstand it? You cannot imagine how often I had to increase the potency just to ensure its effects."

With a sudden interest in the nearby bookshelf, Vergil turned and walked out of his brother's path. Sparda gave a terse click of his tongue, remaining in place as Dante stormed up to Agnus.

"You aren't going to stop him?" I hissed at the king. He'd been so adamant moments before.

His smile seemed to be a mockery of the ones he usually wore. "If it comes to it, I'll step in, but I'd like to keep my limbs for now."

If Sparda wouldn't help me, I knew better than to try asking Vergil. I didn't have the time anyway. Dante reached Agnus in such a furious red blur that he seemed to spark and waver like a fire. I had to run to catch up, skirting around the metal portion of the floor, even though I'd seen it hold Dante's weight.

"Hold on," I demanded as Dante's sword tested the edge of Agnus's throat. Considering I'd done the same a few days before, I hardly had room to intercept, but this was not Dante's problem to fix. "He still may have some use."

"You're not human," Agnus said, eyes bright with interest rather than fear as they swept over Dante. The prince's snarl twisted with discomfort. A twitch of Dante's sword did nothing to quell Agnus's excitement. His roving gaze caught sight of Sparda, bringing a grin to Agnus's face. "Then am I in the presence of royalty?" he asked. "I've heard so little about Capulet's family that I didn't recognize you. Forgive me. I would have been more hospitable."

"Yeah, I hear you treat your own prince great," Dante snarled.

As the tips of Agnus's gloved fingers tested Dante's sword, his tone fell to blandness. "If you are upset about the poison, you should turn on Credo. He is the one who requested it for Nero."

Agnus didn't flinch when I drew my sword as well. "What did you say?" I bit out.

"It must be so convenient for you to blame everything on me," Agnus said, his expression caught between a smirk and a scowl. "How easily you forget how you hounded me for something, anything to 'fix' the boy's arm. And when I gave you what you wanted, you threw that back in my face as well."

He was wrong. I'd never understood what the medicine did. I would never have given it to Nero if I'd known it was poison.

But now I was just lying to myself. I'd never known how the medicine worked, never understood the side effects or why he needed it every single day. But I'd always known what it was for.

"I may have asked you for something to help him, but you never told me it was poison," I said, struggling to keep my tone firm to mask my weakness. "Not that it would have made a difference. The alternative you gave me was far worse."

When Nero was a baby, I wouldn't let him out of my sight. I trusted no one in the castle to his care. He was my charge, so I kept an eye on any maid who looked after his needs, and the moment Nero was old enough to function without them, I sent them away.

When he grew too big to carry everywhere, I made sure his hand stayed locked in my grasp anytime we needed to go somewhere in the castle. He made no complaints. It was all he knew.

But as my teen years settled in, I grew weary of having him stuck to my side. Between that and Sanctus's constant badgering about the alchemists wanting to run some "tests," I gave in and let them have Nero. "Not even for an hour," they said.

Despite never being apart from me for more than a few moments, Nero followed the strangers away to the chimes of my assurances. He wore that wobbly pout that only children can manage, but he didn't argue. Not the first time.

When he came back in tears, wild-eyed like some startled rabbit, I realized I'd made a mistake. I didn't understand the full weight of it until Sanctus told me they would need to take Nero again. "He's quite sick," was the lie everyone gave me. "He needs treatment. It will be over soon, when he's better."

They wouldn't let me go with him, no matter how I tried to demand it, no matter how he sobbed and begged every time they tore him away. He often returned in a drugged haze and would lie in his bed, staring at nothing in endless silence. I wasn't sure if I hated that more than when he returned trembling like a leaf and clinging to my side as tears rolled down his face.

The worst, though, was when he was dropped into my arms like a weighted sack - limp, unconscious. Pale as death.

No one told me why. No one told me what was wrong with him. No one ever told me a damned thing.

"Credo," he said when he managed to keep his eyes open long enough to speak. His words came out as soft breaths, so quiet I had lean close to understand. "Is it done now? They said it wasn't gonna be forever."

My hand found a fever when I placed it on his cheek to try soothing him. That was when I decided I'd had enough. "Yes, my prince, it's done," I said. "You never have to go back again. I promise. I swear, they'll never take you again. You won't ever have to see the dungeon or think about it anymore. I'll make sure of it."

When they tried to collect him again, I faced them with fury and a sword in my trembling hands. "No more," I spat. "You don't get to take him there. You're making him worse, not better. I won't let you."

Whatever whims Sanctus possessed led him to smile and say, "Very well," and that was it. I didn't understand until Nero's fever grew worse and his arm began to… change.

Sanctus knew that I would need to go crawling back to them, that I would have to beg for aid. Whatever it was that had infected Nero's flesh, it spread from the back of his palm to his fingertips in two days. From there, it grew up against my useless attempts at medicines and research. By the fifth day, I could tell it was no human disease, and it was not divine. Nothing divine could have looked like that or caused someone so young and defenseless so much pain.

Perhaps thankfully, Nero was incoherent through most of it. The fever left him confused at best and unable to form words at worst. The gloss over his eyes always reflected pain from their depths. When the thing reached his elbow and began to glow, I saw no choice but to seek out Agnus.

He and I had not spoken before that point, no matter my attempts to demand answers of him. I waited at the entrance to the dungeons all day, watching terrified and angry men dragged in by guards. Though I'd heard of more than one alchemist working there, he was the only one to appear in my presence when he finally left at nightfall. While he wasn't that much older than me, I was a scrawny fifteen-year-old, made smaller under his unimpressed glare. "What did you do to Nero?" I demanded, trying to summon all the royal authority I'd seen my father use. But I had none.

"I did nothing he didn't require," Agnus said, some words snagging against him in an odd way that I later learned not to bother him about. "You're the one keeping him from his treatments. You're destabilizing him. If anything is wrong, that is your fault, not mine."

"Lies! His arm is cursed! It shines like moonlight, and you have the nerve to say that's my fault and not some alchemist's folly. You will fix what you've done. Turn it back!"

His anger snapped to curiosity, which I later learned to fear from him. "Is that right? I'll have to take a look then."

"You will not set foot near him."

"Then how am I to fix the problem if I cannot examine it?"

"You caused it. You can reverse it. It keeps spreading up his arm. It will reach his shoulder soon, and then-" Actually, I didn't know what then, but I feared what would happen if it kept on beyond that, if it reached his head or his heart.

"If you want the truth, I don't think it's an issue," Agnus said. "If its growth concerns you, let him return to his treatments, and I can put an end to it."

"No!" My hand clutched the sword grip at my hip so tightly that my knuckles ached. "You will never take him back to one of those. I refuse. If you're supposed to be some great alchemist, then fix what you've done and put his arm back the way it was!"

The bastard backhanded me so hard that I staggered against the wall. "I am great, but you would not understand that. There's no undoing what's been done. You let his arm get to that point. You will have to face it."

I kept my hand on my sword, refusing to acknowledge the throbbing pain in my face. Though every inch of me burned with the urge to strike him in return, I straightened my back and looked him in the eye. "There must be something you can do."

"What? Would you have me cut his arm off? I think you could manage that yourself."

That felt like a worse blow than his hand could ever land against me. My stomach twisted in knots. "If… If that's what it takes. But surely there must be something else."

His laugh came out more like a hiss. "Enough. Give me a few days. I'll give you something to drown out the effects, though I expect you'll complain of that as well."

He was right about that. I never let him hear the end of my fury over the "side effects." In exchange for the demonic sickness stopping at his shoulder, Nero never seemed to overcome his fever. Always pale, always lethargic. The medicine made him so weak that any more than an hour of strenuous activity would knock him flat. He rarely stayed up past sunset, yet he slept well past sunrise. If he pushed himself any harder, and he always did, then he hacked up blood. His breaths rattled through his insistences that he was fine. No matter how many years went by, he would always tell me that he was fine.

I told myself that perhaps he was right. He was as fine as he could be, never recalling the tests, the dungeon, or Agnus. I'd told him he would never have to think about them again, and at some point in that fever-induced haze, he listened to me. In his mind, he'd never set foot in the dungeons at all, never met Agnus.

If there was a god, that was the one mercy he afforded me.

"Call the poison my fault if you must," I said, sheathing my sword. "I'll bear that sin because it kept Nero away from you."

"Yes," Agnus sighed, "it's unfortunate that His Holiness sided with you on that matter. I could have molded Nero into something far better than the whining wretch he turned into."

Tempting as it was to consider which bone of his to break, I would not let Agnus control my rage any longer. I would not give him the satisfaction. Dante had no such qualms, and I understood his anger better than anyone. I'd seen the way his eyes burned with a righteous fury as I told them, my enemies, of my charge's greatest moment of weakness. That look was the only reason I trusted Dante, the only reason I'd voted to allow him to accompany us into the castle when Sparda and Vergil had suggested against it. Dante, for all his obnoxious tendencies, did not want to see harm come to Nero.

Besides, I wasn't going to leave Nero alone with the handsy bastard, but that did make him my responsibility, especially when he reminded Agnus of the sword against his neck. Though I grabbed for his arm and tugged, I found him frozen in place as well as any marble statue. "You don't have much of a sense of self-preservation, do you?" he asked Agnus.

Before I could try my hand at scolding him, his father cut in. "This is the one that's worth it, Son?" The calm in his voice held a weight, a warning. I looked back to find him standing at the edge of the metal trap along the floor, staring down at it with the same disapproval he showed his son. "This is the one you'll kill over?'

"Someone has to," Dante said. Though he pulled his sword back, he still seemed poised to run Agnus through at any moment, so I kept my arm hooked with his as though I had any chance of stopping him.

"I think we'll have something more pressing to worry about momentarily," Sparda said, looking like he had an itch steadily driving him crazy. From beyond the door, I could hear something faint yet loud. Yelling.

We must have been found out. The last thing I wanted to do was fight my own guard.

"Damn," Dante hissed, his anger branching to worry as he looked toward the door. "Did he follow us?"

Before I could make sense of his words, the door shattered just as the other had under Dante's boot. I'd been wrong. The last thing I would have wanted was to face Nero then, yet there he was, seething with such rage that I felt like his glare alone would brand me.

Then, in one sickening second of an eternal moment, his anger vanished, drowned out by that same empty gaze I'd not seen since he was a broken child I had to lead away from the dungeons.

Everything I'd done meant nothing because I knew that he remembered then. I couldn't even bring myself to call for him.

Others were yelling, though, all at once it seemed. "Agni, Rudra, don't you idiots dare!" Dante snarled beside me.

"Nero, don't do anything rash," Sparda said in a weak plea.

"Let him Trigger," Vergil said. "He can wear himself out."

Swords seemed to manifest in Nero's hands, curious weapons the likes of which I'd never seen. Alongside them came rivulets of light in blue and red hues flowing around him. The ink seemed to bleed from his hair, and crystalline white shone alongside the red of his eyes, redder than any pigment or blood. Someone- No, something appeared at his back - a demon or phantom. I couldn't say which. I could see so little of it before Nero took a step and cut the air with one of his swords.

A whirlwind of broiling heat tore through the room, bringing with it a trail of fire. It was as though a dragon had stormed into the room. All I could do was duck away and hope for the best.

"Was it like this before?" I heard Sparda yell over the roaring winds.

"No," Vergil answered. "It was nothing like this."

When the winds eased enough that I could look up, I found the room destroyed, patches of fire burning anywhere they could grab hold along the shelves and stone. "I'd underestimated him," Agnus said, his smirk giving way to a grin. "He wields Devil Arms well. Seems I was closer to success than I thought."

Dante spun on him once again with a growl. "Alright, enough of-"

As though some spell had been cast, they all froze. Even Nero stopped his staggering advance. Besides the crackling of the fire, the room fell to silence, yet Dante, Vergil, Sparda, and even my dead-eyed prince all turned as though a song pulled their attention toward the horrid steel maw on the floor.

Vergil spoke first, his tone thin and biting like frost. "You said it was sealed."

"The seal is…" Sparda's eyes flooded with some horror that I couldn't understand, but when he turned to look at Nero, I felt my expression mirroring the king's.

With an ear-splitting crack, the spell shattered. Our distractions had allowed Angus to slip away toward a lever engrained in the wall. Chains sang as they rose and fell within the walls. Gears ground and groaned under our feet, making the whole room quake so much that I struggled to keep my footing.

When Nero staggered, his hands clutched at his head. Something was wrong. Something was hurting him, and I needed to get to him. Just as I took a step, he slashed both swords again, and a wall of fire consumed my vision.

Nothing hurt, but I heard a hiss in front of me. "He did say he was going to burn my coat. Damn, kid."

Peering out from the useless shield of my arms, I found Dante facing me and dusting at his shoulders to smother smoking embers. I hoped he wasn't expecting any thanks because I would give him none; instead, I pushed past him to see where Nero stood. Breaths rattled Nero's shoulders like death had come to claim him. Nothing in his eyes looked like him. Nothing in his eyes looked human.

"Nero!" I called, desperate to pull him back. "You must stop! The castle will burn at this rate."

Even his voice was not his own. "Then let it burn," he growled as the floor opened to an endless void in front of him. In a swarm, something poured out of the depths below, a wall that shielded Nero from my view. Some of them were the Order's armor. I knew it too well to comprehend it as anything else, yet it flew. As did the swords which shimmered in a brilliant show of light like Nero's arm. More like a warning than a beacon.

"What are these things?" I asked as I readied my sword and my stance. I was not sure that either would do me much good.

"I was hoping you'd know," Dante said. Though I expected a smirk, he wore none. "But if I had to guess, I'd say they're a fight."

"How astute," Vergil drawled. I looked toward him just in time to catch a flick of his small blade shattering one of the armor sets as though it were ceramic. The inside held nothing.

"Artificial demons." Sparda's tone was darker than I'd ever heard it. "Agnus, did you create these?"

Dante took care of one of the swords that flew toward us, flicking its away with a clean sweep of his blade. Though I managed a similar parry against a lance one of the armor sets held, my strike clashed against the plating in a useless attempt. I'd fought plenty of demons in my time, but those tended to have something that could be pierced or shredded. Even the usual cracks in Order armor did me little good when nothing inside could bleed.

Agnus sounded far too pleased with himself about the whole thing. "Call them a happy accident, I suppose. I stumbled across a means of binding demons to objects during one of my many attempts to create the prince. These make far superior soldiers, actually. It's taken two decades, but I've almost perfected them now. You'll make for some fitting test subjects."

"Create the prince?" I echoed under my breath. I didn't have enough air to ask any louder, forced to duck and jump away from an endless flurry of incoming strikes. There were too many of the damned things.

When I chanced a glance, I realized that my worry for Nero was unfounded. He tore into the demons with such ease that shards of the metal rained around him. I seemed to be the only one struggling with the demons, leaving me with no option but to focus on keeping myself alive.

My relief over Nero lasted half a second before a ringing resounded through their air, such a pure, unending note that it could have been a song. Dante spat a curse.

"Enough, boy," Vergil said. "Keep this up, and I'll pin you with your own blades."

Another moment's glance, and I found Nero's swords locked with Vergil's, the thinner blade braced in defense. All the demons must have looked the same to Nero, and I didn't trust that one not to cut him in half. Blind to reason, Nero reared back for another strike, only to catch a different sword. I hadn't realized that Dante was no longer at my back until I saw him across the room between the other two princes. His hair shone as white as Nero's.

Being alone left me at a greater disadvantage, but one I could accept if it meant that Dante could keep his brother from harming my charge. Though I couldn't focus on them while trying to keep myself alive, I could hear Dante's desperation. "Kid, stop. You've got to calm down. I don't want to hurt you."

"He'll survive," Vergil said.

"That's not- Nero, stop!"

"Boys, try to get away from him for now," Sparda said. "He'll only attack you if he sees you as a danger."

With a quick glance, it became clear that Nero heard nothing they said. His eyes held only that empty, blinding red. I had no plan, nothing that I thought might get through to him, yet as I wrenched away from another attack, I threw myself into a stumbling run. I had to get past the demons, around the gap in the floor, and back to him. The king's knight was always to remain at his king's side, even at the worst of times. At the very least, I could do that.

Another burst of flames tried to stop me, and it would have if not for a responding rush of ice. I could only imagine it to be some type of magic as trails of ice crystals like pointed towers coated the walls and floor. The flames hissed at the contact, sending a thick layer of steam into the air that left me blind.

I didn't see the armor barreling toward me until its lance was a breath away from my throat. No human could have kicked it into the wall the way the strange blonde did when she too appeared from the mist. When the armor tried to pull itself upright, she slammed her heel against it.

The ice must have stemmed from whatever artifact she held. Frost coated her hands from gripping it, yet she showed no reaction and wore so little that she should have been cold regardless.

"You should keep all your dogs leashed, Your Majesty," she called. "Or do you wish to see this town razed?"

"I don't wish to leave the boy defenseless in this," Sparda answered.

"If you can't defend him yourself, just have the dogs do it separate from him. Letting him keep a weapon is foolish."

"What are you even doing here?" Vergil demanded.

"Now isn't the time for questions." With a sigh, she lowered her voice. "And here I thought they could handle this themselves."

When she bothered to acknowledge my presence, it was only with a glance and a wave of her hand which suggested I should continue on. Though I remained stunned with confusion, she was right. I could ask later.

Somewhere in the fog, I heard the sure crack of a crossbow firing. Lady, perhaps, but visibility stopped within three paces. I just had to hope they weren't firing at me.

The last I'd seen, Nero was at the pit's edge, and though I wanted to be as far from it as possible, I hugged its side in search of him.

I saw the glow of his arm and the daunting apparition before anything else. Then Sparda with his loud purple coat. His sword was held firm at Nero's side, blocking a lance that Nero didn't seem to see. Red eyes locked on Sparda, Nero had one sword buried in the king's side. The strike would have killed a human, halfway to cleaving him in two.

"Dad, what did you do?" Dante called from somewhere. Something like concern tinted his voice.

"It reeks of your blood," Vergil added. The matching tone didn't fit him.

"It's fine," Sparda answered. "Stay where you are for now. Clear out the demons."

I couldn't tell if Sparda's narrowed eyes were from pain or frustration. With a flick of his hand that could have been a conductor with a baton, he cut the armor down. His free hand locked onto Nero's wrist, keeping the sword jammed in his side.

"Agni, Rudra," he said, his tone as daunting and deep as any good ruler's. "Nero is not fit to serve right now. You will return to form and protect him that way."

In a flash of blue light, one of the strange demon children appeared from nothing. No, not nothing. I understood when I saw Nero's wide gaze look to his now-empty hand.

"Sorry, Master," the child mumbled as he tore the other sword from Nero's grasp with ease, and consequently, from Sparda's side. A rush of blood followed, coating the small demon's hands. "You said to help him, so we were trying to help."

"It's fine," Sparda said again, holding tight to his side. It looked anything but fine. "Destroy the last of those artificial demons for me."

Nero took a slow step back as he searched his hands for the weapons he'd lost. The phantom at his back began to dissipate into the mist. "Little prince," Sparda sighed. "You must come back to yourself. I know this is easier than whatever else you face in your head, but I fear you will do something you will truly regret."

Just like the others, Nero showed no signs of hearing him. A ragged growl tore up Nero's throat, and his demonic hand shot out to the side as though he could take his weapons back from the air.

Except, he did.

A hollow snap rang through the air, the sort of sound that could have only come from one source, one that made my stomach churn. Dante called his brother's name with such shock that I didn't need to look to confirm what had happened when Vergil's sword appeared in Nero's hand.

Despite all reason telling me otherwise, I looked anyway. The mist had thinned enough that I could see Vergil as a wobbling outline. Even with his hazy shape, I could see that his arm was bent wrong. His form flashed into something that I couldn't make any sense of, so I looked back to Nero again.

His phantom reappeared, different from before. It stood a ghostly, pale blue. Sparda's fist curled and uncurled as he let out a slow, sharp breath. When he spoke, I understood the true voice of a demon for the first time. "I've killed for less," he said, his words like ice through my veins. "Nero. Enough."

Ever deaf, Nero swung the thin blade, sending out a slash that dug a trench into the ground, wall, and a couple unfortunate demons. Sparda was not one of them, as he slid one foot back and stepped out of the path of the strike. The blood drained from my face as he raised his blade.

Unlike the others, I couldn't have survived a direct attack from Nero. But if Nero were to attack me, then perhaps there was truly nothing left of him. Or perhaps that was what I deserved. For all the pain and lies I'd given him.

Either way, I wouldn't have wanted to live to see him consumed by his demonic side. If I died trying to bring him back, so be it.

"Credo?" Sparda barked as I wrenched myself between them. Closing my hand around the wrist of Nero's demon arm, I tried to lock my eyes with his, tried to find something of him in their depths.

"My prince, it's done," I said. "We can go. You'll never have to come back here again. I'll take you anywhere else, anywhere you want to go, as far from here as possible. I swear. Please, my prince, I cannot lose you too."

At some point, the sword's edge had found my neck. I could feel a dark, hungry power from it like a clawing beast in a cage, but it did not strike me.

Nero's empty eyes brimmed with tears.

Just like all those years before. A poor terrified child I'd locked away in lost memories. It was no wonder he fought.

Sparda was still behind me with his sword halfway up. His eyes were caught between surprise and concern. "Your Majesty, please move back," I said, hoping he could read the desperation in my gaze. "I think being near so many demons made him worse."

With a nod, he took slow, retreating steps without ever letting us out of his sight. When I turned back to Nero, I found his clouded eyes on mine once again. He seemed to be searching for something.

"You can drop the sword, Nero," I said. "We'll take care of things from here."

As soon as it clattered to the ground between us, the red in his eyes faded to a tired blue. The phantom vanished as well.

I heard something like a whistle, a call for a dog almost. Then yelling.

One of the living demon swords appeared at the edge of my vision. I couldn't react in time. I could only tighten my grip on Nero's wrist as I watched the sword tear through him like a needle through fabric.

He gave a soft, breathless cry of pain as the force of it threw him over the edge of the black void cut into the ground. Refusing to let go of him and unable to grab hold of anything else, I slipped into the darkness after him.

If I'm honest, the chapter was originally going to be longer and not end here, but it was already longer than my usual chapters, and I'm tired.

Consider leaving me a review because my computer crashed during editing, and I spent an hour redoing all of that instead of sleeping. I'm dying.