Dante

Hours slowly melted into day, which in turn melted into night and soon, before Dante was even properly aware of what exactly was happening, two weeks had passed and his arm had shown no sign of turning back into what could be called a human hand. And worse things were beginning to happen now.

He could hear a voice sounding in his mind.

At first, there had been no real cause for concern, it had all started off with a mild headache, and really, by now that was nothing new. It was not a real problem, and Dante had merely decided to put the cause of it down to an excess of stress. But then it had started to build as the days had passed and by the end of the first week, it felt as if something, some little creature of some kind was running around inside his head, as if some beast had been hatched and was searching around desperately to find a way out of his head.

Often, the pain was so blinding that he could do nothing but stagger about in agony, completely blinded by his pain, unable to call out for some sort of help, unable to let anyone see how truly afraid he was.

Fear. He was half demon, sure, but he was also half-human, and like all humans he was just as capable of feeling fear or crying out in agony as he suffered. Then the pain would slowly fade away and he would be left shaking, a cold sweat covering his body as he tried to recover from the onslaught that the thing had hurled against him. He knew he should have done something in the way of trying to fight it off but this was different; this was something that he could not see, this was something that he had no idea how to fight off.

And he was terrified.

He felt trapped, as though he had been locked in a cruel steel trap that he had no chance of escaping, a trap that would never let him go, that would only squeeze around him until the life was crushed out of his body.

How could he ask for help? How could anybody help him fight this thing when it lurked inside his body? How could they try and help him fight when he had no real clue how to fight it off for himself? Lady may have been adept at killing, sure, but at the end of the day she knew nothing about the health and workings, had no clue of the physiology of a demonic body. Trish too, may have also tried to help but her problem was the same as Lady's; the only difference was that it was her knowledge of humans that was limited. And that Lucia chick? Well, she was so far away and even when she wasn't, what help could she be?

He'd only met her once before, a devil-slayer to a devil-slayer. She had commented vaguely about the fact that demons seemed to have started breeding more and more on her island, Vie du whatever the hell it was called. But he had given her his card nonetheless, told her to call if things got rough, if he could ever be of any help. She had at first politely declined but he had insisted, had said that his father would turn in his grave if she didn't take the card.

His eyes suddenly brightened and a brief hint of a smile hovered around his lips. Maybe she could be of some indirect service after all? Matier. The old woman had said that she had known his father and she had seemed somewhat wise and knowledgeable about both the races that resided within his one body. Perhaps she would know something? Any sort of action was better than sitting here and doing nothing, he decided, and it was better to travel to them; the woman was old and was no longer fit to take such journeys.

Still, the ticket fare would be worth it if he was somehow able to find out what exactly was the matter with him.

As if to punish him for his daring, as if to laugh and mock at his vain attempts to look at the situation from a logical stance, his vision became blurred and turned to black. He fell to the floor as pain robbed his magnificent body of all his strength, as he became as weak and as defenceless as a new-born.

The agony lifted, and with it, so did his head. He waited in silence as his vision slowly returned to him.

This latest attack had made up his mind.

He had no choice but to try something, anything.

And so it was that he slowly hauled himself up to his feet, managed to struggle his mutilated claw into a glove and trudged outside.

Enough time had been wasted, and again it was time to stand up and face a new foe.

Perhaps the most deadliest one yet.