It is easy to descend into Hell.
The two men descended the rearing road, in its web of dead branches. Although they had expended their ability to transform into supernatural beings, the air seemed to call it back. Creatures swarmed from the undergrowth, and they pushed through them in a shower of thanergical ilumine. Their presence like a stick driven into an anthill. The broken cement leveled alongside the trunk of the Qlipoth, the tree that had desolated one of the most bustling cities in the known world. Its master brazenly strode into the coarse air. The sky was gray and heavy with pronounced dark clouds. Light from the overworld caught through it and made limbo pale. It cast long shadows that bathed the environment in black darkness. Dante followed his brother through the snatching black roots, along lanes meant for large transport vehicles. One such lay overturned and unsalvageable on the edge. Slimy, sloping demons had entered its body and feasted on the driver, slamming his corpse against the windscreen.
As they advanced through Empusa, Caina, Riots, Furies, Behemots, Bats, and no small amount of Nobodies, real remnants of the world above had become absent, and false mirrors of the streets had superseded them. They were nonsensical. Upside-down, multiplying, or warped. Some appeared to be real presences until one were to inspect the proportions of the mannequins or the depictions on advertising posters.
White line fever must have set in, because Dante failed to recollect when the road had turned as gnarled as the branches. He had no doubt his brother had the same deal going. They kept following it in lieu of entering the undergrowth. It seemed to thicken and allow for more hordes of shambling human corpses with heavy metal in their boney claws. Some familiar faces awaited them, and a wave of nostalgia and trauma crashed into Dante through the adrenaline. For the first moment, he wondered about their standing lack of safety while vacationing in the world’s asscrack.
They eventually left the trunk of the dead tree behind them. The open was a quiet wasteland that sported large obelisks that marked the entrance to the underworld. “This is the Delta.” Vergil confirmed. The shortest path to the center of hell that formed when the environment of the inner circles were brought to the human world and malformed the layered structure of hell as it gravitated around a deep center.
“We going deeper?” “That would be the mission, should we wish to assert our authority over the evil here.” “Spot on, I’ve waited my whole life for this, let’s nip this thing in the bud before we get another bug problem upstairs.” “We can only hope there is something worth of squashing.”.
The air held something sinister and powerful. Something other than purpose pulled them to continue into the dense dead forest, and the suspicion of that detail excited the two cambion swordsmen.
Mists cleared. Electrical charges that carried the summoning power of demons networked in the vault above. The vein-red woods thinned into another wasteland of mountains. From their perspective at ground-level, it was a rocky jungle of caverns hollowed out by insectoid creatures.
Pyrobats met them at the mouth of a cave and charged them screaming, desperately hoping their numbers would let them to feast on the brothers, but they were as a wall of paper to their sharpness and precision. Once they had shredded them, the brothers sat down for the first time in the mouth on each side of the long arch.
“Dad’s foresight never did him any favors, but he was pretty lucky to have named us after the most bothered authors of speculative fiction in Italy.“
“The irony of our outing doesn’t pass me, our namesakes must have played a greater purpose.”
“Besides appointing me in charge.“ He smirked, but looking up Vergil eyed Dante as he held his knees with clammy hands and stared at the ground. From the gray bags under his eyes to his cheekbones highlighted by malnutrition, he looked terribly old. A thought crossed his mind in the moment: (The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.)
Vergil leaned back and closed his eyes. He attempted to concentrate on their direction. It was a process of mapping out the surroundings and feeling the energy of the underworld on his skin. In the vortex of hell, all demons were aware of their position relative to the eye. It pulled at his hair and his breaths even here in shelter from wind.
Vergil breathed deeply and tasted the wind. He tasted the powerful magic of the center of hell behind subtle winds from the infernal cave system below. He felt the charge of the center and strengthened the connection that would help him maintain their direction. He also felt the demons that would stand in their path.
When he reopened his eyes, his brother was in the same position, but with fresh eyes he recognized him as a scolded child, as though his brother had been convinced he should hold guilt for all that was wrong and terrible. He was mindlessly fidgeting with the crystalized vitality of a demon. When Vergil rose, Dante did not notice him. He walked to him slowly and appeared to shock him when he moved to signal Dante with a hand gesture. The elder made to leave for the deep unnatural dark of the cave and his little brother slowly raised himself to follow. Not a word from Dante. He had never been this silent as they descended into the dark. Perhaps their quest was too daunting yet.
All of hell was dark, of course. It was permanently nighttime, lit by fallacious magic, and the air heavy with mists. A human would find it difficult to see. Where any shadow was cast a demon could hide from human eyes. The deep darkness of the underground caves was clouding even their eyes and they had summoned some power to light their eyes, bodies and surroundings. The purple blur attracted reptilian creatures of all sizes and intelligence. The screams of aggravated demons rung through the cave system. Vergil reminisced on the taste of a riot as he pulled the insides from one, and the smell of it seemed more pungent. Dante fought with a distance to him. He applied simple slashing motions, which Vergil elected to tolerate, although it dragged out his kills. He felt himself likewise tiring from the nauseating miasma filling his nose.
The buried passage expanded into a large underground grotto, and the far wall held a fortress of brimstone settled into the cave wall. Alive torches flickered by the gates. So did the unnatural blue flames in the moat. It lit them up from below as they passed across the broad, brimstone bridge. “Must be an essential attraction site.” Said Dante, side-eyeing the defeated, empty husks that sat against the facade, some of which had collected in praying positions against a defiled and worthless goddess statue.
Vergil read the inscription in latin that framed the black, gated door: “All which are free of witchcraft are granted passage, to all else, enter as offerings to the servants of hell.”
“It adds up. They threw down a grease-joint smack down the middle between the highway and subway…”
“Hell is no stranger to barriers, as it is portals. Let’s surmise this will be the first of many.”
“This must be gluttony, or greed or what-have-you. I’m not big on geography or subscribing to borders. Did you bring a passport?”
“Can’t say that I did. A dreadful oversight. We can hope that the post is abandoned.” He pulled a lever which raised the gates. The husks stirred in passing interest. Vergil entered confidently. Dante followed him with a worried glance back. The brimstone insides were darker, much darker. And cold, but no breeze flowed. They came to suspect a Cerberus would guard the inside, but they sensed and saw nothing of the sort. Only empty armor and lifeless statues met them. Paint still remained in the marble, which made them stare pronounced at the intruders.
Freakish was it, that the stones seemed to creak and scream like old wood inside. They suspected that it was an ambushing mechanism too late, and a spiral of fire erupted from the walls and travelled down the hall towards them. The brothers exclaimed profanity and set into a run. They did not make it far before iron gates shot up from the brimstone and closed them in. The fire quickly caught up and clutched their bodies painfully close.
Neither had the energy to transform into resistant bodies, and so they desperately sought an opening mechanism through boiling eyes and charring hands. The stench was unforgettably foul and sweet.
Vergil bent over in pain screaming when Dante grabbed his arm. He saw that his clothes and hair had burnt off, and his bones were threatening to escape though black skin. The sight of his brother’s exposed sinew spasming with his forced movement made him sick. Although Vergil looked no different to Dante, his pained expression and coarse screams put him in shock. He raised hands he could hardly feel through pain and burnt nerves, and caught the iron bars. He screamed as they seared his flesh and the smell entered his nose to make him retch. It matched the pain of the sword at his hip, which had likewise taken to the heat. Iron clattered against the ground and exploded. Against him, Dante had seemingly exhausted his tolerance for pain and collapsed to the ground against him but was evidently still awake by the spasmic grip on Vergil’s arm. Where their flesh touched, pain erupted manyfold. Liquid erupted from their swollen skin and scorched their nerves. Vergil felt the stones burning off his feet and saw the damage it was doing to his brother to have collapsed, he had blackened where he touched the floor.
Screaming coarsely, and feeling his chords snap with the cry, Vergil charged his forearms with plasmatic force that coated and guided his form and bent the gates to his will. His bones bent and snapped as he did so. The burning iron screeched and opened for them to escape. Vergil had no functionality left in his lungs and nothing but smoke to breathe, but he quickly brought a loose arm to hatch onto Dante and threw them out onto the cold floor on the other side of the bars.
They pushed out of the prison as two charred ghouls. Boiled away were their clothes, skin and hair, once the immense pain had subsided, the latter two had regrown, yet too little of their clothes remained to alchemically mend. Dante picked off an iron buckle that had mended with his skin and tossed it.
Vergil watched him as he came down from the pain himself. His breathing ceased laboring after a long while. Now, his nerves carried an infernal itch that would doubtlessly cause him aversion to fire moving forward “Hell will make fools of us yet.” He said, coarsely.
“Some hospitality. I’ll be cross with this threshold.” Dante murmured, with none of the nonchalance that usually carried his mocking words. He ran a hand through and shook ash from his hair.
They raised themselves from the ground. Now an issue remained as they stood bare in the fortress. The weapons they had dropped on the grill. The hellfire continued to rage in the hall behind the bars.
End Notes:
here come the headcanons (rolls eyes) and a really elaborate reason for giving them new costumes. There are no fashion shops in hell unfortunately. i dont know.