Chapter 1: Welcome to Hell

Nightwing hit hard on a rocky ground when the portal spewed him out in hell. He gasped miserably when his ribs reminded him of their poorly state and curled himself up protectively so he wouldn't be hit by any of the flying objects that shot out of the gate. But it wasn't for long before the noise stopped, the gate closed and everything quiet down.

Dick didn't bother to look up. He knew what had happened anyway and right now he just wanted to take a deep breath to let his body relax for a second. However, it was not as pleasant as it should be. The strangely sulphureous air scratched inside his lungs. With every breath he felt the individual ailments of his body more than ever.

Dick shifted himself onto his back with all limbs extended to lessen the strain. He stroke one of his hands over the wound Trigon had inflicted on his side and then held it in front of his face. It was pretty bloody.

Actually the black-haired just wanted to stay on the ground a little more, but he knew that he must stop the bleeding quickly before it would get really dangerous for him. Groaning, he straightened up and looked around first.

Wherever he looked there was only dead rock and steaming lava flows that meandered through the desolate land under a blood-red sky . No green, no water , just the screeching of strange creatures in the distance and the stinging smoke in the air.

This dimension truly lived up to its name Hell. However, in addition to the many debris from buildings of his world, there were all sorts of objects between them that the portal must had swallowed.

Among those things, he spotted Damian's broken katana a few meters away from him. Effortlessly, Nightwing rose and dragged himself heavily to the fragment. He checked on the broken sword. Most of its blade was no longer there, but almost 25 cm was still preserved and due to the broken tip, which ended up pointed, it could still serve as a weapon. Who knew what monsters lived in this area and since his Escrima -sticks were lost during the events, this toothpick shall take their place. He decided to take the piece with him and put it on the empty back bracket.

He looked around again but this time for something specific. Little by little Dick climbed over the rubble and searched the rows. After about 5 minutes he found the object of his desire under a pile of broken boards. Nightwing knew that there had to be at least one of these things somewhere since the gate sucked in everything in around 300 meters. He took the battered first aid kit into his hands and started to smile, when he saw its date. Expired two years ago, as if that would bother him right now. He gently opened the lid and went through the individual components. Scissors, an emergency blanket and all sorts of stuff that would help him take care of this nasty wound. This should help for now .

Dick settled on a nearby wall and grabbed the scissors. He generously cut a hole around the wound into his suit before the real work could done. First he tried to remove most of the blood as best he could, and then washed the rest away with the disinfectant . Before doing so, Dick took the broken katana into his hand again. Because of those stupid creatures that were wandering around this area, he wasn't even allowed to make a sound and Dick knew his next move won't be a pleasant act. So he clamped the handle between his teeth and then let the pale liquid flow over this stupid wound. Dick bit hard on the sword handle as the pain rushed through his body.

Holy Shit, it burned worse than a massage from Red Inferno.

His upcoming holiday just increased up to 5 weeks. That meant if he could get out of here again.

Although his wound was cleaned now, he had nothing to sew the torn flesh together. For the time being, a pressure bandage has to hold everything together somehow and prevent worse things from happening. So he could take some time to find a solution for this problem .

Dick closed his eyes to allow his body a little rest for a moment. The high temperatures in these lands dragged hard on him and sweat ran almost stream-like down his temples. Richard had to find a cooler place. Otherwise, it means out of the danger of bleeding out and into the heat death.

Dick grabbed the first aid kit, put the katana on his back again and stood up heavily. However, he didn't get far as his legs buckled in the middle of the movement and he landed down on his knees again. He stared at them, perplexed . This was not a good sign. His body was apparently weaker than he first thought. He had to hurry up before the strength would left him completely.

The black-haired man searched the surrounding rubble and found a long steel pipe under a few loose stones. With the help of the newly acquired support , he finally managed to straighten his body and take one step after another, looking for a safer place.

Again and again Dick looked around in case that between all this stuff of his world he would locate something useful. But at the moment all the battered bicycles, mailboxes and fashion magazines weren't of any use to him. The further Dick went, the more this garbage dump developed into an empty rocky landscape with pointed mountains and lava-spewing volcanoes. How could he find cooling in this misanthropic environment? Also, he couldn't go too far away from the collapsed portal. It could re-open again and all solve all these problems he had at the time.

But it was also unknown whether it would open ever again. Raven had never expressed herself if she had the power to do so and the occult orders, which started this the whole thing was immediately wiped out by Trigon after he made his first step onto earth.

In Short, he had to make a plan for a possible long time stay. At least until Batman and the others found a solution to open this stupid portal again. Trust was the most important thing right now.

Dick dragged himself through the scorching heat for a while now and still couldn't find anything to cool himself. The first aid kit, which he had taken with him for safety, felt like a heavy stone by now, making it difficult to get forward. Slowly first signs of a heat fever showed up. Headache, dizziness and extreme thirst. In addition, there were occasional heat cramps, which only got stronger due to the high blood loss .

What wouldn't he give for a single glass of water.

Suddenly there was a gentle splash in the distance. Dicks head raised immediately as he heard the familiar sound. Could it be? The place of it's origin seemed to be right behind a hill in front of him.

With newly awakened spirits, Nightwing pushed himself up the steep slope. Again and again he rammed his supportive pipe into the ground and forced his legs to continue walking until he finally reached the top.

In front of him was a huge crater and in the center of it a pond with a little stream, that ran down the other side and into it. However, the water in this pond had a strange color. A yellowish green shining and a strange smell in the air made Dick suspicious.

Nevertheless, he slided down the slope to inspect it more closely. With every step he came closer, the air pricked in his nose even more. A bad premonition occurred to him when he was standing right in front of the water.

To test it, Dick took his iron support pipe and held it briefly into this strange broth. As soon as it hit the surface, hissing started and green steam floated into the air before the metal began to dissolve. So there was the answer. Acid, at its finest.

Richard sighed heavily before repositioning his lowered prop next to him as an aid. He truly arrived in hell and slowly began to doubt that he could ever get out of here in time. Because without water it would be difficult to survive even the next few hours. What a shitty situation.

He thought about what would be the best next action. There must at least be water somewhere. After all these strange creatures lived here and even they had to live of something like water.

As if this was a cue, Dick heard loud wing flaps in the distance and they didn't seem to come from some cute budgies. To be safe , he hid behind a nearby rock and waited for what would happened. Probably the right decision.

Two of the monsters living in this hell flew towards the acid from the other side of the pond. Dick peeked out from behind his hiding place and examined the two creatures more closely. If he had to describe them in detail, he would probably call this species a horse-sized mixture of dog, lion and bat. Really ugly.

But what made him shiver in shock much more was the fact that these beasts just drank this stinky pools acid, which had dissolved his iron pipe just a minute ago. Truly a slap in the face when the hope to find water was simply taken away from you. Resigned, Dick folded his arms on his knees and rested his head on them.

That's it. He was going to die here. Water was the most important foundation for survival, but it didn't seem to exist in this world. So his chances to live dropped down to zero.

Fear rose inside Richard. Up until now, Dick has always been able to avoid falling into this helplessness by being positive in every situation. But despair and fear gnawed at him more than ever. Fear of dying alone here and not returning even as a dead person. After all, this was hell and the idea of staying here forever, simply scary.

Dick shook his head violently. He couldn't think about this at the moment. Whoever gave up was immediately lost. Nightwing tried to get rid of the negative thoughts and calmed down a bit. He had to pull himself together.

Suddenly the two creatures stopped in their actions and started to raise their snouts. Dick noticed the loud sniffing at his direction and the realization hit him hard. He sat inside a Huge craters, in which probability wind was blown down the slope and spread out his smell of blood around the whole pond, inviting formally Lady and the Tramp over there to a romantic candle Light Dinner on the house. The monster started hissing in his direction and came closer. This was his death sentence.

Dick now scraped up every remaining strength in his body and forced his shaky legs to run. He heard how the two beasts behind him start running and take off with loud wing beats. But Nightwing didn't look back. He just focused on getting out of that damn hole so he would not end up as a snack.

Richard had just manage to reach the top, as one of the critters, still flying, hit him in the back with its huge paw. All air escaped from Dicks lungs at once and he rolled, after a few meters of flight, now down the other side of the hill, until he finally came to halt at the end of the slope. Pipe and box lost midway. The cries that followed could no longer be suppressed. Each push, every stone he took on his way down felt worse than ever in his injured ribs and he knew that the wound on his side was bleeding again.

Crap.

Still, Dick forced himself to get up as quickly as he could. It was probably only due to the adrenaline inside the rest of his blood that he managed to do so, panting heavily. Nightwing didn't understood how he was still able to run. But he did.

Further and further, until the pain started to water up tears inside his blue eyes.

Again one of the beasts rammed him to the ground but this time Nightwing didn't managed to rise up again. He was lying on his stomach in the dirt because Dick felt dizzy and trembled all over from exertion. He could hardly breathe due to his ribs and could only make out the outline of his surroundings. Richard had reached the end of his strength.

The two creatures landed a few meters behind the man lying in dust. Their mouths already dripping with salvia excited about the upcoming meal and more hissing left the monsters throats. They greedily sniffed first at the foreign body before one of the two animals took a lick with his rough tongue over the loosened bloody bandage and while doing so it teared them completely off. Dick groaned painfully in his dizziness as the second creature also licked with its tongue over the now free flesh apparently to test whether this strange thing before them would meet up their taste or not. Because of the contact with this rough organ, the licks tore him on his back during this process like a motionless doll so that his half closed eyes could now look up at the blurry beasts.

This will probably be it for him now. That's how Richard John Grayson's story will end. Far from home. Ripped apart by two hounds of hell that won't even leave any crumbs of his body. All his loved ones will never know what happened to him and have to live with that.

Dick didn't noticed how tears ran down his emotionless face when he, because of a certain thought, started to smile.

With an empty grave, you ultimately only lie to yourself.

In excitement the two Monster purred over his bleeding body. Apparently they had taken a liking to the exotic taste that came with it. The black-haired groaned again as one of the creatures pressed its enormous paw onto his chest and leaned closer to his face. The cattle smelled savagely from its throat. But Dick decided that this wasn't the end of Nightwing. Just as the Mighty Teeth were about to disassemble his body, Dick quickly pulled the broken katana from his back and rammed the blade with everything he had into the creature's head.

The beast reared up onto its hind legs and cried out in pain. But Dick refused to let go. As if he had fallen into a kind of intoxication, his hands clenched around the swords handle and into the monster's mane. Again and again he stabbed the head of the cattle, felt how the skull gave in and blue blood splashed onto his face. However, the whole thing came to an abrupt end when its partner's paw hit him hard in the side and hurled him away. Dick flew between two narrow rocks and landed roughly on stony ground inside an inconspicuous cavity. He heard the creatures screeching outside and saw that the unharmed one was trying to follow him. However, it did not fit between the rocks. He sat up and looked as the huge paw repeatedly slipped through searching, but ultimately did not reach him.

He was safe ... for now.

Dick ignored the Beast and looked around. The cave was huge and reached far into the mountain with its long tunnels. A small lava flow that dripped down from a wall largely enabled him to see the most.

Including his own body. Hematomas, cuts and especially the now even more torn meat at his side covered it together with a layer of sweaty-smeared dirt. He even didn't really registered that this was actually his body.

He just didn't feel the pain anymore. The Dick languidly dragged himself to the flowing lava. Strangely serene his hand held the katana on the gel-like surface before he pressed the hanging pieces of his side together and burned them with the help of the now glowing blade back to one.

It could have been a stranger, whose flesh was just burned because Dick was now so far away that didn't really perceived to be hurt, let alone the resulting horrible smell. He just functioned.

The broken sword clattered to the floor as Nightwing braced himself against a nearby wall. He wanted so much to give in to this swoon, finally escape the heat and relax but his instinct told him that he would not wake again if he did. So he stayed leaning against the rock and fought for his consciousness.

With the returning calmness his half deaf ears heard a soft sound from one of the many dark tunnels. Dick looked up and concentrated on it . Again it seemed to be something like a ripple. Leaning further against the wall, he decided to follow the sound and dragged himself through the dark. He stumbled again and again because of the persistent dizziness and his blurred vision. Even if this rippling was just an imagination, it was currently a rope that his mind could cling to. So he dragged himself further and further.

It seemed like an eternity until he finally reached his destination nearly out of breath and entered another large cavity. Unlike the first one, it was pleasantly cool here and there was a certain amount of moisture in the air. The jagged ceiling was strangely turquoise, but his half-closed eyes did not allow him to determine the exact reason for this at the moment.

Right now this simply didn't matter.

He focused on what laid in front of him. Shallow water gushed from a crevice in the wall into a small, filled basin on the floor . It was so quiet that Dick wondered how he could even hear this quiet sound at the other end of the cave.

To death exhausted Nightwing kneeled emotionless in front of the clear waters.

Although it looked like the water he knew from his world, he did not want to raise false hopes as before.

As if it hadn't been Dick's hand, the fingers, encrusted with blood and dirt, slid into the strange water to test whether it was really some kind of water, or just some deadly acid that would now take this part of his body away from him. But nothing happened.

It was cool and pleasant on his damaged skin. Dick pulled his wet fingers back out and put them under his nose. No smell.

Resigned, he decided to hand his life over to Fortuna.

Slowly his body shifted automatically forward until the chapped lips drove into the water.

He started drinking. Felt how the liquid pleased his dry throat and cooled down his heated body from inside the stomach. Although he did not know if this water would kill him but only for what he felt right now, it was worth to die. So he continued to drink. As much as his body could take in at its state before he stopped and sat up again.

Absentminded Dick looked straight on the blurred wall in front of him before his body completely collapsed.

Already half elsewhere Nightwing tipped onto his unburned side and clung even more to the pleasantly cool ground, as he turned to the longed fainting.

Dick was curios how Fortuna would decide. Life or death?