The Qliphoth's roots erupted from the concrete like spears, each one dripping black ichor that hissed where it struck metal. Dante's boots left molten prints as his skin split open in jagged crimson fissures—not bleeding, but *ventilating*, the cracks pulsing with inner fire. His coat dissolved into floating embers, revealing obsidian carapace that gleamed like volcanic glass. When he grinned, his teeth were serrated shadows.
**"Showoff,"** Vergil murmured, watching his own transformation fracture reality in concentric rings. Yamato melted into his forearm, the blade becoming one with veins that now glowed cerulean beneath onyx flesh. His hair ignited—not burning, but *unfolding*, each strand extending into luminescent ribbons that writhed like sentient plasma.
Mundus's duplicates recoiled in unison, their shifting faces coagulating into a singular rictus of recognition. **"Sparda's taint,"** they hissed through split lips, the words slithering between dimensions.
Dante cracked his neck—a sound like boulders grinding. His voice emerged layered, the human timbre underpinned by something deeper that vibrated the harbor's fouled water. "Takes one to know one, huh?" Rebellion had grown jagged edges, its surface crawling with infernal script that smoked where it touched air.
The first wave struck like a living tsunami—dozens of Mundus-fragments moving as one amorphous mass. Vergil didn't so much as twitch. Yamato *remembered* the motion, the blade's afterimage carving through six duplicates before his muscles finished contracting. Their bisected forms hung suspended, ichor crystallizing mid-spurt.
Dante charged through the gap, Rebellion's jagged edge shearing through three more. One fragment lashed out with claws that extended mid-swing—only for Dante to catch the wrist between his teeth. His *chomp* reverberated through the docks, the sound wave shattering warehouse windows six blocks east.
**"Disgusting,"** Mundus's voice boomed from the still-intact duplicates. The Qliphoth's trunk pulsed, birthing fresh fragments that oozed from its bark like pus from a wound.
Vergil's hair-ribbons lashed out, spearing through two duplicates with surgical precision. Their screams harmonized unnaturally. "You always did lack originality," he remarked, watching the newest clones stumble from the tree. Their limbs were mismatched—too many elbows, fingers fused into claws.
A gargantuan root swung toward Dante's flank. He pivoted, allowing the blow to connect—only to *grab* the appendage mid-recoil. Muscles bulged beneath his carapace as he *heaved*, the root's tip screeching against concrete before snapping taut.
"Home run," Dante growled, and *spun*, using the root as a flail that obliterated seven duplicates in a single sweeping arc. Chunks of demon flesh rained down, each piece writhing like severed starfish arms.
Mundus's central form—still embedded in the Qliphoth's split trunk—snarled. **"You cannot—"**
Vergil appeared nose-to-nose with the main body, Yamato's edge already buried in Mundus's sternum. The blade pulsed once, vibrating at a frequency that liquefied the surrounding air. "We already have."
The resulting explosion peeled back reality in layers:
1. **Sonic**: A shockwave that shattered every remaining window in Gotham's East End, the glass hanging suspended for three full seconds before obeying gravity.
2. **Thermal**: The harbor's surface flash-boiled, creating a steam geyser that scalded the underbelly of the Batplane currently streaking toward the site. Oracle's voice crackled through Nightwing's headset: *"—reading thermal spikes—"*
3. **Temporal**: For exactly 1.3 seconds, every clock within a two-mile radius ran backward. Witnesses would later report seeing their own footsteps retracting from puddles.
Dante landed beside his brother in a crouch, Rebellion's tip carving a molten trench in the concrete. "That's gotta sting," he remarked, watching Mundus's central form reel backward, clutching its bifurcated torso. The edges of the wound sizzled with Yamato's residual energy, preventing regeneration.
**"Insolent—"** Mundus choked, black bile bubbling between his teeth. His remaining duplicates convulsed in sympathy, their movements becoming jerky marionette twitches.
Vergil flexed his fingers. The air between them warped like a heat mirage. "Your turn."
Dante's grin was all fangs. "My pleasure."
Rebellion's jagged edge *elongated*, the blade segments telescoping outward with a sound like a glacier calving. Dante's carapace pulsed darker, the infernal runes across his chest flaring crimson as he channeled energy downward—through his boots, into the fractured concrete, deep into Gotham's bedrock. The ground responded in kind, spiderwebbing with fissures that glowed molten orange.
Three blocks away, Commissioner Gordons binoculars slipped from his fingers as the docks *lifted*—a thirty-yard slab of reinforced concrete rising like a trapdoor on invisible hinges. Debris rained onto the Gotham River as Dante *heaved*, veins standing out like cables beneath his obsidian skin. "Hate to say it," he grunted, muscles straining against impossible mass, "but you might wanna—"
Vergil was already airborne, Yamato's edge describing a perfect vertical line through reality itself. The cut hung suspended—a glowing laceration in the air—as he pivoted mid-flight, delivering a second slash horizontally. The resulting cross shimmered like heat haze before *detonating*, the spatial rift expanding outward to meet the ascending platform.
Mundus's remaining duplicates *screamed* in unison as the dimensional tear intersected Dante's improvised catapult. The Qliphoth's roots flailed, whipping through the air like beheaded snakes, but physics had been temporarily suspended. The demon lord's central form clung to the bucking concrete, his many faces contorted in apoplectic rage. **"You dare—"**
Dante's boot connected with Mundus's jaw—*hard*—the impact sending teeth spiraling into the rift. "Tickets please," he quipped, riding the ascending slab upward as it flipped vertically. Vergil's spatial cut yawned wider, its edges crackling with Yamato's residual energy.
Five hundred feet above the harbor, the rift *swallowed*—concrete, demonic biomass, and all. The sound was neither explosion nor implosion, but something *between*, a pressure wave that popped eardrums across the East End.
Back on solid ground, Dante landed in a crouch, his carapace steaming where rainwater hit the superheated surface. Vergil descended more gracefully, Yamato sheathing itself mid-air with a *snick* that cut through the sudden silence. His hair-ribbons retracted, the luminous strands dimming to cobalt.
A wet *thud* interrupted the stillness.
One last Mundus-fragment—a severed arm still twitching with malign intelligence—slapped onto the docks near Huntress's abandoned crossbow. The fingers spasmed, claws scraping grooves in the concrete.
Dante sighed, stomping over to grind the appendage underfoot. "Always one straggler," he muttered, watching black ichor bubble between his toes. The substance evaporated with a hiss, leaving behind only a scorch mark shaped like a screaming face.
Oracle's voice crackled from Batgirl's ruined comms, the speaker sputtering back to life through sheer stubbornness. "*—thermal readings dropping—status?*"
Batgirl coughed, her gloved fingers leaving smears of soot and blood on the broken device. "Alive," she rasped, then grimaced as Constantine's rosary bead crumbled to dust in her palm. The remnants glowed faintly before winking out.
Constantine himself was propped against a stack of shipping containers, his trench coat sleeve torn to reveal hastily-scribbled wards still smoking on his forearm. "Right," he wheezed, fishing a crumpled cigarette from his pocket. The tip ignited on its own—whether from magic or demonic residue was unclear. "So. Devil May Care and Son. That's a thing."
High above, the Batplane's engines whined as it circled the devastation. Nightwing's voice carried down via external speakers: "*Batgirl, we've got medics on standby—what's your—*" He cut off abruptly as the plane banked, its spotlight catching Vergil's upturned face. "*Oh.*"
Dante stretched, his carapace receding with a sound like settling chainmail. Human skin reappeared in patches—first his jawline, then his hands, finally his chest as the coat materialized anew. "Man, I forgot how *chatty* Gothamites are." He glanced at Vergil. "You owe me a pizza."
Vergil's coat rippled as his own transformation reversed, Yamato's hilt glinting at his hip. "I owe you nothing." His gaze tracked the retreating Batplane with detached interest. "Their persistence is...tedious."
vergil walks up to the remains of the quiloph tree and eats the quiloph fruit before walking away and Dante leaves as well but the man who has rencarnated wonder what will happen next
The Qliphoth's corpse pulsed once—a final, arrhythmic throb that sent viscous sap oozing from its splintered trunk. Vergil's boots made no sound as he approached, each step measured, the leather soles leaving faint imprints in the ichor-slick concrete. The fruit hung suspended in a nest of ruptured capillaries, its skin gleaming with unnatural luster—not quite red, not quite black, but the deep burgundy of a healing scab.
Dante's sigh carried across the ruined docks, his breath misting in the sudden cold. "Really, Verge? After all that?" He flicked a chunk of demon viscera off his shoulder, the meat hitting the ground with a wet *plop*.
Vergil's fingers closed around the fruit. The peel yielded like living flesh, warm against his palm. "You know why." His thumb split the rind with surgical precision, revealing fibrous pulp that pulsed in time with his own heartbeat.
Constantine's lighter snapped shut. The cigarette between his lips trembled as he inhaled. "Mate," he croaked, smoke curling from his nostrils, "whatever you're about to do—don't." His wards still smoldered on his forearms, the hastily-drawn sigils flaking away like burnt parchment.
Batgirl dragged herself upright using a twisted I-beam, her gloves squeaking against the metal. Her domino mask hung by one ear, revealing the darkening bruise around her left eye. "That thing's pure demonic energy," she wheezed. "It'll—"
Vergil bit.
The pulp burst across his tongue—cloyingly sweet, with an aftertaste like copper and spoiled wine. His throat worked once, twice, then his pupils dilated. Veins surfaced beneath his skin, branching like lightning across his jawline. The air around him *shivered*, warping like asphalt in midsummer heat.
Dante's hand hovered near Rebellion's hilt. "Okay," he muttered, "here we go."
The transformation wasn't explosive—it was *inevitable*, Vergil's human form dissolving at the edges like watercolor in rain. His coat flared into cobalt plasma, the fabric unraveling into luminous threads that wove themselves around his ascending form. Yamato *sang*, the blade's edge vibrating at a frequency that made nearby rebar hum in sympathy.
Batgirl's comms spat static. Oracle's voice emerged in jagged fragments: "*—power surge—flee—*"
Constantine's cigarette fell from limp fingers. "Christ," he breathed, watching Vergil's shadow stretch unnaturally across the rubble. The silhouette had too many joints, too many teeth.
A tremor ran through the docks—not from destruction, but *recognition*, as if the earth itself remembered what walked upon it. Vergil exhaled, and his breath crystallized in the air, each frozen particle reflecting the Qliphoth's dying light.
Dante cracked his neck. "Alright," he said, rolling his shoulders, "guess I'm babysitting again." His hand found Rebellion's hilt, but he didn't draw—just adjusted his stance, boots crunching on shattered concrete.
Vergil turned. His eyes were no longer human—just voids rimmed with cerulean fire. When he spoke, his voice layered over itself, the lowest register vibrating the puddles at their feet: **"I have what I came for."**
The Batplane's spotlight wavered as Nightwing banked sharply, the engines whining in protest. His voice crackled from external speakers: "*Dante—what the hell is—*"
Dante waved a dismissive hand. "Family reunion stuff. You guys should probably—"
Yamato flashed.
The cut appeared horizontally at first—a razor-thin line splitting the night air three feet off the ground. Then vertically. Then diagonally. The resulting spatial fracture yawned open like a hungry mouth, revealing a vortex of swirling blues and blacks. Somewhere in its depths, things *moved*—shapes too fluid to be human, too angular to be natural.
Constantine made a strangled noise. "That's not—that shouldn't—" His fingers scrabbled for another cigarette, came up empty.
Batgirl's escrima sticks sparked feebly. "You're just...leaving?" Her voice cracked on the last word.
Vergil didn't answer. He stepped into the rift, the edges of his coat dissolving into the void. The last thing visible was the gleam of Yamato's hilt—then the tear sealed itself with a sound like a guillotine's blade snapping home.
Silence.