![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Devils Cry Chapter 2-21
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Devil May Cry and it’s characters and situations are the sole property of Capcom. I am making no money or profit off of this fanfiction and no copyright infringement is intended. On the other hand all original characters and situations are mine so please don’t run off with them without my knowledge or consent.
Summary: A year after the events in “The Devils Cry”, things in the Sparda family have calmed down, well, as much as possible with them at any rate. But when strange things start happening, including a reappearance of Alastair's dreams of the unknown castle, they realized that they still have a long way to go.
SPOILER WARNING!!!: Spoilers for all three Devil May Cry games.
21.
"I probably don't want to know," Dante said once they were back in the safety of Lar'cincel "but what is Mundus planning?"
"He's going to destroy us." Rithas said grimly "All of us, so he can create something else, something more obedient"
Kastor nodded in agreement. “He’s abandoned his plan to bring us back under his control, since we made it clear to him that we are not going to stand for it.
"If he comes for us here, we'll be trapped." Talthos said quietly "He has more than enough power to tear the wards down around us, and there is only one entrance and exit in and out of this tower."
"So what do we do?" Sri asked no one in particular. No one knew the answer to that question it seemed, for the room fell silent.
'We take the fight to him." the elder Vergil said suddenly, causing everyone to look over at him. He looked around at everyone with a fierce and determined look on his face that surprised those that knew what he had endured in the past. "We take it to him, before he can come to us. If we chose the place, it will give us an advantage." Looking around again, he could see the others nodding in agreement and his father smiling proudly at him, causing him to have to resist the urge to blush.
"Once we do fight him, and if he was successful, then how do we kill him?" Terln asked "If we don't destroy him, he will simply find a way to come back to power."
Zenedris and Talthos looked at each other and grinned. “Leave that to The Sarcesti and Valters families.” Zenedris said easily “It won’t be a problem, trust me.”
“Oh?” Kastor quirked an eyebrow “What do you have in mind.”
“Bring your family and join us in the library so we can explain it to you.” Talthos said with a smirk “It should be an interesting bit of magic. Lord Bolverk, if you would kindly join us?” Then he stood up from where he was sitting and went out of the room and up the stairs to the library. The adults of the Sarcesti and Vatlers families followed, as well as Thenal Bolverk.
“While they’re up there, scheming, “ Sparda said “the rest of us can rest up a bit and make sure we’re ready to go. As soon as they’re done up there, we’re leaving.”
*****
Mundus sat idly upon his throne, wishing his eyes could penetrate the wards around Lar’cincel, so he could see what those inside were doing. His grandfather Lemian had been a fool when he had given life to Almen Sparda. Every difficulty he, Mundus, had had with the Seven Families had started with the Spardas. He should have killed Sparda as an infant at his inspection when he had the chance, and spared himself all this trouble. He ignored the little voice in the back of his head that whispered that the Seven would have rebelled eventually anyway; sooner or later they would have looked into their records and realized the facts.
He was distracted from his thoughts when he saw movement at the doors to Lar'cincel. He looked closer and saw Sparda step confidently out the door, followed closely by his sons, father, and his grandchildren. As his eyes narrowed at their boldness - how dare they act confident when he was going to destroy them all? - Zenedris Sarcesti stepped out the door, followed by her family. After her came the Bolverks, then the Valters, then the Ximorns, the Itarls, and the Sris. As he watched they walked calmly across the plain, and he leaned back in his throne, unable to stop the smile that touched his lips. They were coming to him, and when they reached him, he would destroy them all.
*****
The large group of demons, led in the front by the Spardas (except for Luxian, who was locked up in Lar'cincel) crossed the heart chamber and gathered on the ledge in front of the throne room doors. All of them noted that the heart was beating and the doors unsealed.
Mundus was expecting them, it seemed.
The seven families formed into lines, each line headed by their patriarch (or matriarch in the Sarcestis' case), and as one the seven pushed the throne room doors open. Bright white light, an illusion created with magic flooded the heart chamber as the walked over the threshold into the throne room. They walked calmly across the polished stone floor - another illusion - with only the sound of their footfalls echoing off the bare walls. No one said a word, and Mundus watched their approach in silence. They did not stop and kneel at the first step of the raised dais, like protocol dictated. They did not wait for him to acknowledge them. The kept their gazes on him as the seven lines approached, stopping at the last step before Mundus' throne.
"So," Mundus rumbled "you've gathered up the courage to come and face me."
Several bristled at the implication that they were cowards, but no one spoke at first. Then:
“It is time for you to vacate the throne.” Sparda said calmly “and return the rule of the Underworld to the Seven.”
Mundus’ eyes narrowed in anger. “And if I refuse.”
“Then we will force you. We will not allow your line to go on.”
“And how do you plan to force me?”
Sparda shrugged. "I fought you once, and you lost. My son fought you once, and you lost. If all of us face you together, I'm sure you will lose, and this time, it will be permanent." he said dryly.
Mundus slowly stood up from his throne, and he seemed to grow in front of the assembled demons, losing his small, red eyed, black haired form, and changing into the large angel form that Dante had fought years before. The Seven stood calmly in front of him as he rose in height to the ceiling, never flinching, never showing any sign of nervousness or worry, just watching.
"Do you think he's compensating for something?" Alastair whispered to her brother, causing Dante and the elder Vergil to nearly choke. Sparda and Atalia had to fight to keep the smirk of their faces, while everyone else looked at them in confusion, puzzled over the human saying.
"Silence!" Mundus boomed above them "I will destroy you like the mindless insects you are!"
"Ooh oh, sis, I don't think he appreciated that crack at his manhood." the younger Vergil said with a grin.
Alastair raised an eyebrow and then: "Help! Help! I'm being repressed! I'm being repressed!"
Dante and Vergil looked at each other for a moment, then they started to howl with laughter, while Sparda and Atalia began to chuckle.
"ENOUGH!" Just like he had with Dante 27 years earlier, Mundus threw his arms out, and the black void rushed out from behind him to engulf them.
*****
Standing on the rock that was floating in the void, the Seven watched as Mundus floated above them, held aloft by his wings that were made in the mockery of an angel's.
Kastor looked around, feeling that something was wrong about their surroundings... He glanced over towards Zenedris Sarcesti to see that she appeared to be having similar thoughts. It appeared as if Mundus had moved them to an entirely different space, yet he had felt no sense of movement, no sense of shifting to another plane. He closed his eyes for a brief moment and extended his senses, frowning when he felt that they were still in the throne room. When he opened his eyes, he saw Zenedris with her eyes closed, apparently doing the same. She then opened her eyes and looked at him and nodded.
*****
Sparda felt a brush against his mind and heard a voice in his head: Keep him distracted. He knew that he was not the only one that had received the thought, and he sent an acknowledgement, as did the others.
It seemed at firs\t that they wouldn't have to do anything to distract Mundus, as the dark emperor launched into a spiel about how he was going to destroy them all, and with them out of the way, he would conquer the human world and rule supreme! and so on and so on. Sparda heard Dante crack a yawn behind him and smiled. So intent was Mundus on his own words that he never noticed the scenery around him flickering and fading. The illusion then vanished completely, leaving them all standing in a bare rock cavern, roughly the same size and shape as the throne room - which made sense because it was the throne room - and still Mundus prattled on.
There was a whirring sound, the flash of demonic steel, and with a loud thunk!, Mundus' rant was abruptly cut off. Everyone looked up, in equal parts amusement and surprise, to see the Alastor lodged firmly in Mundus' third eye, lightning crackling over the blade.
"If you are quite through stoking your ego, can we get on with it now?" Alastair's voice rang out in the sudden silence. With a wet shucking sound, the sword pulled free of Mundus' eye and returned to her outstretched hand, leaving a bleeding hole behind that dribbled blood down the Dark Emperor's face.
"I don't know, sis." the younger Vergil called out "I kinda wish he would carry on, I haven't had my nap for the day, you know." The two of them broke into laughter.
"SILENCE!" Mundus roared.
Alastair turned to her brother. "You see, the subject is incapable of demonstrating a wider range of vocabulary due to its limited intelligence."
“The subject also appears to suffer from a form of superiority complex due to its massive size.” Vergil added.
“I WILL DESTROY YOU ALL! “ Mundus raged “STARTING WITH YOU!” He pointed a truck sized finger at Alastair and Vergil.
"It is as we observed," Alastair said "it believes that repeating itself will make itself look powerful and dangerous, when it is obvious to everyone else that all such posturing does is show its low intelligence."
"Yet the subject has yet to notice that its illusion has been destroyed," Vergil added "which shows its poor observational skills."
Mundus, about to start another spiel, paused at their words and looked around, noticing that his complex illusion of his magnificent throne room was gone. A momentary look of confusion flashed over his face, before he heard Dante and Vergil's brats laughing at him. At him! No one laughed at him!
Alastair and Vergil's laughter stopped when Mundus dropped lightly to the stone floor, lightly being hard enough to shake the room and cause dust to sift down from the ceiling.
"Finally," Alastair grumbled "I didn't think he was ever going to get on with it"
Mundus bowed his head and folded his arms in front of him, causing four large glowing balls of fire to appear and circle him. The demons, seeing the attack for what is was, scattered, just as Mundus sent the honing missiles into their midst.
The battle was on.
*****
Zenedris and Kastor led their families off to the side, with Talthos joining them. The three of them stood facing each other, forming three points of a triangle, while three others stood around them in a second triangle, standing in the formation of a six point star. Half of others joined the formation, expanding outward, while the other half formed a line in front of them. Those in the line began chanting, and if anyone had been watching, they would have seen the group shimmer and vanish behind a powerful illusion. Once they were safely hidden, those in the formation began chanting as well, a long complicated string of words that took absolute concentration to cast. Hence the reason for the illusion spell, they could not afford for Mundus to guess what they were doing and interrupt them. They would not get a second chance.
Sri Sris noticed the Sarcestis and the Valters separating themselves from the group and wondered briefly what they were up to before he focused all his attention on Mundus. He knew that his family was weak, putting them at a severe disadvantage, so he wasn't sure how to go about this... His family clustered behind him, waiting on leadership that he didn't know how to give. He turned to look at him as the other families charged into the fight. He shrugged his shoulders, turned around, drew his short swords, and charged right in after them. His family followed.
Thenal and Rithas ran straight for Mundus, noting out of the corner of their eye how the Sarcesti and Valters family vanished from sight. Not sure what they were doing, but knowing that it was important, they figured that this was the perfect excuse to give Mundus absolute hell. It was only to keep him from noticing that two families had apparently disappeared from sight, of course. A head count back at the safety of Lar'cincel had revealed that many of their women and a few of their children had died during the assault on N'mir'kus, so the Bolverks had very good reason to throw their rage at Mundus. When they were close enough, Rithas launched himself into the air, burying the blade as well as much of the shaft of his spear into the Dark Emperor's calf. A giant he may be, but Mundus certainly felt the blow, and he roared in surprised pain and swung his leg about, dislodging the spear as well as the demon that was hanging onto it. Rithas landed neatly on his feet on the other side of the room and charged in for more, noting with some surprise that the wound he had inflicted did not heal.
He's can't be! he thought He can't be diverting his healing power to extend his life.
Sparda, walking steadily towards Mundus, carrying another one of his father's swords, as Talthos was now carrying his Ensouled, also noted that would that Rithas had inflicted had not healed, and the same thought crossed his mind. Now that he thought about it, none of the wounds he had inflicted on Mundus during their last battle had even appeared. He had thought the demon lord untouchable then, and had nearly given into his despair when Mundus had suddenly fallen. An illusion perhaps, to hide how fragile he really was? If he was using his healing power to extend his life, then he would not want the others to know about that weakness, lest it be exploited. He couldn't help the predatory smile that appeared on his face. With all of them working together, this might be easier than they had thought. His walk turned into a full run as he dropped his human form in favor of his natural form, brandishing his sword like he had once done over two thousand years before, when he was young and naive and followed the imperial orders given to him implicitly. He launched himself straight up into the air at Mundus’ exposed back, ramming his blade into his shoulder all the way to the hilt. As Mundus reached over his should to grab him, he pushed down on his blade, slicing downward through the skin, leaving a slash down the back before pulling it out and dropping to the floor.
Dante and Vergil, who had been walking behind their father, saw him dr\op his human form and break into a run. Grinning at each other, they did the same, running at double speed towards Mundus' side now that he had turned some to face Sparda.
"And they're off!" Alastair started up her commentary somewhere behind them "And Sparda lands a nasty slice to Mundus' back while he was looking elsewhere, and this was after Rithas Bolverk sticks it to him in the leg! And we've got Dante and Vergil gong for broke, and I don't know what the hell those two are planning, but it's gonna be good!"
Dante and Vergil grinned at each other again as they simultaneously reached Mundus’ feet and began running straight up his legs, one on each one, as Mundus turned to face them. They run up over his tunic and began to drag their swords beside them, pressing the points down to leave bleeding cuts across his chest. The wounds weren’t deep, but they bled, and they would annoy him. They then back flipped off as he swiped at them, landing on the ground several feet away, close to where the Sarcesti and Valters families were still chanting behind their illusion. The two of them couldn’t see or hear them, but they felt the hair on their arms and the backs of their neck rise up at the feel of the magic swirling around them. Not wanting to risk disturbing the spellcasting that was obviously going on, they ran back towards Mundus and the others.
“Oooh! And gets his hair singed from a blast for fire from one of the Ximorn!” Alastair kept up her commentary as she ran around Mundus, looking for a good place to strike “Hey, here’s a question! If a demon’s hair gets singed off, does it grow back? Lame joke, I know, back to the fight!”
She leaped across one of Mundus’ massive feet, pulling Tiamat and opening fire on his toes for kicks. Mundus jerked his foot back, and she followed it as he did so, firing on his entire foot, before running off before his attention could focus on her. Shooting at his toes seemed kinda petty and childish to her, but the plan was to distract him, not to kill him until the spell had been cast. What that spell was, she had no idea. “And Alastair reduces the toes of his left foot to a bloody mess! I’m sure all this harassment is really getting on his nerves, folks!”
Sri glanced up at the rocky ceiling, an idea blossoming in his mind. Gesturing up at the ceiling directly above Mundus’ head, he reached out with his earth power and willed several large boulders to break loose and fall. He couldn’t help the grin that appeared when two of them thunked him directly on the top of the head, with several others landing on his arms, his shoulder, and one landing directly on the foot that Alastair Sparda had not shot up.
Mundus looked around him, spinning this way and that. He felt his blood boiling as he was unable to concentrate long enough to form any kind of counter attack. The lesser demons were like insects, mosquitoes, biting and then buzzing away before he could swat then. He hadn’t landed a single hit on any of them yet! So caught up in his rage, Mundus never noticed that he was starting to weaken.
Zenedris led the others in the spellcasting, pleased to see the large dark grey rope forming between them and Mundus. Invisible to everyone but them, it was Mundus’ power and magic being drained out of him. it swirled around them, invisible behind the illusion. Once it had all be drained out of Mundus, it would be released to return from where it had come from. And Zenedris had a pretty good idea where that was... As long as the others kept Mundus distracted, they would no trouble draining all of it. And if their hunch that he was using it to extend his life was correct, then he would crumble into dust once it was gone.
Lian Itarls looked over at Terln Ximorn and sent a telepathic image to him. Terln nodded and sent another message to his family, relaying the plan. The Itarls then whipped up the air around Mundus into a roaring windstorm, forcing those closest to Mundus to back away or get swept away. Once that was done, Terln sent a telepathic signal to his family, and the windstorm exploded into flame, becoming a firestorm. Everyone backed up and watched as Mundus bat at the flames in a futile attempt to smother them. The Ximorns and the Itarls kept the firestorm going, increasing its size and power, until, at a telepathic word, from Zenedris Sarcesti, they dropped it
Mundus, singed, charred, and smoking, was on his knees, no longer in his large angel form, now in his small, red eyed, black haired form. The spellcasters that were holding up the illusion let it drop, allowing everyone else to see the rope of magic leading away from Mundus as well as the barely constrained power as it swirled around them. Mundus managed to raise his head and look at all as the stood in a semi circle in front of them, panting heavily.
“So, it ends.” he said as the rope began to think and dim “So it ends.” With those final words, he sagged and fell forward to lie face down on the floor, no longer breathing or moving. The silence filled the room as everyone watched the rope thin and dim further, until it eventually faded and disappeared. Mundus’ body then began to dissolve, crumbling into a pile of dust and slowly vanished.
“Is that it?” someone asked, breaking the silence.
“No.” Kastor Valters replied, looking at the swirling magic around him and the others “It’s far from over.”
Free from its constraints, the magic began to seek out its origin. Finding the one that had held it for so long gone, it began searching for where it had originally came. Those people too, were gone, but it sensed that there were several someones nearby that were similar, and it moved towards them.
The Seven watched as the magic pulsed and moved, seeming like a living thing with its own thoughts and will, floating over where Mundus had fallen and hovering there for a second. It seemed to be undecided about something before it began to move over towards Thenal and Rithas Bolverk. It paused, appearing to be confused about something before it began to divide and split. To Alastair it reminded her of those films she’d seen in biology class of a cell dividing. The mass divided and split, divided in split, until there were dozens of them - just enough for each of the Bolverk family. It hovered for a moment, then, moving faster than any of them could track, it moved straight at the members of the Bolverk family, several of them leaving the room, heading in the direction of the children and the few women that had stayed behind to guard them in Lar’cinel.
Rithas saw the head sized ball coming at him and knew with a certainty that he would not be able to dodge it, thought he wasn’t sure he wanted to. The ball circled him for a bit, darting this way and that, and he had the strangest feeling that it was sizing him up, before it reared back and streaked towards him. He had barely enough time to acknowledge that it was coming at him before it slammed into his chest, knocking him backward a few steps before it sank in, disappearing into his body.
Immediately he was overwhelmed by a plethora of strange feelings and sensations, as new information on how to shapeshit into any form he had already seen as well as how to call up magic settled itself into his brain. He staggered under the onslaught, gripping his head in pain, feeling that he was going to pass out. Though vision fogged with pain, he could see that Thenal and the other members of his family were in a similar state. He wondered vaguely then why he was shaking so hard and why standing had become so much more difficult all of a sudden. It wasn’t until Sparda had grabbed him by the arm and began to pull him out of the throne room did he realize that it wasn’t him that was shaking, it was the room itself. Mundus must have had been using his power to keep the room standing, and without him it was collapsing.
“How stereotypical.” he heard Sparda’s granddaughter say as she half carried Thenal from the room “The obligatory Escape-Before-It-Explodes-Level.” Rithas managed a dry chuckle before he lost the fight to stay conscious and blacked out.
Chapter 20 -- Chapter 22
Back to the Archive