Chapter Thirteen: Ensnared

Chapter Thirteen: Ensnared

Note: My eternal gratitude to SkylarMorgan1899, Random Reader Nothing Special, HunterJamie, Aureux, RubixaSeraph, and newcomer Psyco_Karma for their kind and helpful comments. Thanks for the ideas and Inspiration! I’m glad that the void scene at the beginning of the chapter was well received, and that you seemed to be looking forward to chapter thirteen! I had a great time writing this one wide awake at 6:10 am when I should have been sleeping so that I could spend another day doing nothing productive and slowly questioning my life in isolation. This is much better. Enjoy the chapter!

-~-

It didn’t take a keen intellect or inherent superpowers to realize that she was being followed.

There was just something wrong in the air, the darkened sky radiating a supernatural quality that she couldn’t help but notice and be wary of. Shortly before calling Vergil’s brother’s office, she had called to check in with Nero. Thankfully, nothing sinister had befallen them. The storm had been merciful to the island, but was still raging nonetheless. It would have been leagues easier to just ask Vergil to use his incredible Devil Arm to grant her safe passage to the island, but when she had called the office, he had not answered. She could only assume that he was not home or that he had fallen asleep away from the phone, as when she had called him in the past (what few times that she had needed to) he had always answered or called her back immediately, regardless of the fact that he had some sort of prevalent dislike of speaking on the phone. Something about it being too impersonal. Perhaps they didn’t have a caller ID function built into the mainline there? Regardless, she needed to go and check in on them. While the spell had gone better than planned, alchemy could be volatile, and she wanted to make sure that the child she had assisted had come through from the far beyond unscathed. Or as close to it as possible. No one was ever completely fine.

As the middle-aged woman made her way towards the pier, she had noticed that there were two individuals following her. While they could also be looking for passage by boat to some other part of the region or perhaps even work at the docks, she knew that that wasn’t the case. Magnolia had always possessed a sort of sixth sense for things like this, and she made a point of not giving up the fact that she knew they were there to them. It was still the middle of the day, storm or no storm. She was working off of the assumption that they would not be stupid enough to accost her in a normally highly traffick area of town. But that didn’t mean that she was unintelligent enough to completely throw caution to the wind and just march up to the docks without assuring her safety. She hadn’t lived this long by being stupid, even with Vergil in the underworld where he couldn’t get her into anymore of his chaotic schemes.

Magnolia shook her head as she walked, giggling to herself. She was only three or so years younger than him, but this wasn’t the first time he had come to her or her family for their expertise or assistance. As much as she knew it loathed him to admit it, when it came to matters of alchemy, Vergil was not incapable, but he had dabbled more in curses and wards by way of necessity than anything else. He had always been a diligent student of the craft, possessing something of a natural gift with dead languages, but she had feared his entire life that he might be indulging his desire for knowledge with the wrong sort of literature. She was a student of an entirely different field of study, even where most of her family was concerned, but that hadn’t changed her stance on the darker pieces of literature in her family’s library. Her lineage’s rueful relationship with curses had been half of the reason that he had sought her out in the first place, but that had been half a lifetime ago. She needed to focus on the here and now. There would be time to reminisce and catch up with him later on. Still, she had noticed something different about him that she couldn’t quite place. Perhaps he had learned from his mistakes and grown wiser with age? Not likely. At the end of the day, he was still Vergil. It would take something profound to trigger that sort of change in him, as it had taken that to morph him into the person she had known for two-thirds of her whole life in the first place.

Just moments later, she stepped around the corner and slowed her gait to a near stop. These were the last of the back streets. And in the middle of them were two hooded men wearing long black street coats. But they were not the same two that she had sensed tailing her before. No, they were probably with them, but those two were still following her. As if to prove this, they stepped around the corner she had just rounded a moment later, slowing to a stop behind her about the same distance she was from the two individuals in front of her. Magnolia placed her hands in her pockets casually, tilting her head to the side as her medium length brown and grey hair drifted in the strong breeze.

“Well, what’s this then? Planning to mug a lady in the street? Or is there a toll I’m not aware of?” She spoke playfully, aware that this tactic had prevented unneeded violence and bloodshed in the past. People were free to mistake her for being dim at their own peril.

One of the beings standing before her stepped forward, dropping his hood in a movement that she assumed he thought was menacing to her. He stopped just shy of eight feet from her, not quite close enough for them to touch, but enough to unnerve the average lost soul on the street. She was not fazed in the slightest, however. Although the man before her was a full head taller than her, they were about the same size. And if he posed a threat, he could never close the distance between them before she could make a move anyway. Magnolia never went into a fight assuming she was in full control of the situation, but she felt secure in this situation. Nothing about them appeared to be life-threateningly dangerous quite yet. She was a grown woman. She could handle this.

“You’re going to Fortuna, I presume?” The man asked it as though it were a question, but he seemed to already know her answer. Magnolia shrugged, meeting his gaze.

“Perhaps I am, or perhaps I’m just out enjoying the weather. I don’t see what business of yours that would be.” Her tone was stern, hinting at her lack of concern. Perhaps showing how little they intimidated her would make her point ring true to them.

The man leered, unamused by her commentary. “Everything is our business once you set foot on this street. So I’ll ask again. Are you headed to Fortuna?”

“I’m afraid I have to insist that my goings-on are absolutely nothing you should be concerning yourself with,” She used her hands to toss her hair back behind her shoulders, fixing the collar of her long coat in the process. The mist in the air was starting to dampen her normally frizzy hair and soak her soft knee-high boots and knit legging, adding to the chill that already permeated the air between them. “I’ll be going now, dears. Do take care of yourselves.”

With that, she stepped wide to her right, preparing to give the man plenty of room as she proceeded to her destination. Word had reached her through her contemporaries that a freight ship had just recently started taking shipments to Fortuna again. It would be the first since the storm had started yesterday, most docking due to the inclimate weather. But the slightly volatile water was nothing to a ship of that size, especially considering the fact that it didn’t possess sails that could be adversely affected by the winds.

Incensed by her lack of cooperation, the younger man in the black coat stepped forward as if to seize her to prevent her from leaving. She jumped back, the four men forming an arching around her in an attempt to corner her against a nearby building. They stepped closer than they had before, clearly expecting her to yield and surrender, proving them the answer to the question that the man she assumed was their leader had just asked. Instead, he stood her ground, unwilling to be pushed around and intimidated.

“I’m not going to ask you again.” The formerly hooded man said smugly,” Were not here to play around. And the man we represent doesn’t take no for an answer.”

Magnolia removed her left hand from her pocket, allowing it to rest at her side. Her right hand remained in its appropriate pocket.

“Well, that’s quite unfortunate. Truly a shame,” her focus intensified as she assessed the men before her. Disarming any potential weapons they possessed was her first priority. It was a good thing there were no cameras on this part of the block.” I won’t ask you to leave me be a third time.”

Without speaking, the leader gestured towards her, and the other three men that accompanied him rushed forward, descending upon her like a pack of wolves. Magnolia exhaled and removed her right hand from her pocket. She placed her right hand behind her back and raised her left, speaking a single inaudible word under her breath. A moment later a blast of invisible energy shot forward, slamming into them with enough force to knock them off of their feet. One of the men slammed into a nearby building, more than likely knocking himself out cold. The other two rolled to a stop against a set of trash cans, one bashing his back on the edge of the alley. Their leader slid back several feet before regaining his balance, standing up to face her. He cursed under his breath before rolling his shoulders, cracking his neck and fingers. After doing so, he flared his coat and spoke under his breath, placing his hand on the ground.

As she was trying to discern what he had just said, the ground cracked open and several sets of stone coated legs crawled out of the opening. She jumped back, landing on her feet as she prepared to fight back against the giant stone beast that now stood before her. The large stone arachnid screeched at her, it’s huge glowing green center eye-locking onto her. It planted it’s front legs firmly into the tar coated street, opening it’s oversized mouth in preparation to attack. Magnolia’s eyes went wide. She couldn’t place the last time she had seen a Kyklops, and this kid had just summoned one? What the…

This didn’t bode well.

Despite the fact that the young man had just brought it into this realm, he didn’t seem to have a great deal of control over the creature. He stood behind it, obviously struggling in his fight for control. She could only guess that this was the first time he had attempted this, and his lack of focus and experience showed. That was the issue with untethered summons. They could just as easily turn on their masters and kill them as they could destroy their summoner’s opponents. Luckily for him, the demon seemed to be more focused on her for the moment than it did him. It sucked in a breath before blasting out a large chunk of stone, several smaller fragments following it. She put up both hands, spreading them out in front of her as she used an altered version of her last spell to force the rocks back where they had just come from. The largest one cracked upon impact with her barrier, blasting backward in a shower of jagged stone that caused the demon to shriek in pain. It figured that it would take something equally hard to pierce its rough, stone coated exterior.

Several of the larger pieces made impact with the distracted summoner as she lowered her right hand and used it to force several pieces of the stray stone towards the other two men who were in the process of clambering to their feet. They all toppled over, crying out in discomfort. The demon charged at her, bashing right into her barrier as she pushed forward and slammed into it, meeting it head-on. The demon cracked further as the pieces of sharp stone buried themselves deeper into it than they had before, effectively immobilizing it. In a final attempt at taking its attacker with it, it buried it’s damaged front legs into the ground and charged up a second attack. Magnolia braced herself as a second equally sized rock made contact with her barrier spell, this time at less than half the distance that it had been at before.

She tumbled backward, rolling to a stop against a light pole as her shield dropped and the demon howled in pain, dropping dead and disintegrating into a pile of useless rock. She coughed, the air returning to her lungs as she climbed to her feet. The summoner was now unconscious, bleeding badly as his cronies lifted him to his feet while carrying their other comatose friend. One of them shouted curses at her, guaranteeing that she would be sorry for this when they returned. She stepped forward, ready to finish what she had started. The middle-aged woman noted how they practically jumped away from her in fright, startled and clearly unwilling to tango with the person who had just destroyed their first -and possible only- line of defense with deflection magic alone. Magnolia was willing to wager that they had not banked on her possessing a few tricks of her own. They hurried off as she yelled after them, unwilling to take their bullshit.

“I would advise against coming back here and starting anything with me again,” She said as they tucked tail and ran as fast as they could manage considering their condition and the state of half of their group,” You wouldn’t like to see what I can do when I’m not out of practice!”

As they hurried out of her line of sight, she turned and ran off towards the docks, acutely aware that she couldn’t afford to miss the opportunity to get on board the vessel now. This may be the cult she had heard about on the news. She hadn’t paid them any mind until now, but if they possessed even a single summoner, regardless of how inept, then they posed a potential threat to her and her associates. She would attempt another call to Vergil when she was on board the ship, but she urgently needed to reach Nero and V in order to warn them of the possibility of danger. Magnolia could only hope that none of them had reached the island already.

This was what she got for being nice to Vergil Sparda.

-~-

“I’m quite intrigued,” V said as they walked along the icy ledge that encompassed the upper path around Lamina Peak,” I failed to notice before that you possessed wings.”

Nero laughed slightly at the statement, trying not to acknowledge the fact that it was literally cold enough up here to freeze them both solid. Thankfully, he had thought to lend him one of the trench coats that he never used anymore. A purple one with a black shoulder scarf. It fit V surprisingly well, something that he attributed to the fact that he had received it as a teenager. Although V was taller than him (which made the coat about four inches shorter at the bottom than it had been when he’d worn it last), it was still long enough to almost reach his knees. Nero was not as bone-thin as his guest, but he had possessed a different physical structure at the time he’d worn it. Not by much, but it was enough. And regardless, it was strange to see V in so many layers of clothing.

Getting V up the mineshaft had been quite an ordeal. He’d not thought to take the time to explain to him that he wouldn’t drop him when he’d informed V that the only way out was up. Practically tossing him up to the top using his new wings had been the only way to facilitate V’s entry. Nero liked to think there was another way in and no one had found it in a long time, but the odds were against him. The mining town had been rebuilt in the time since his original visit, but the mineshaft had barely been touched and mostly sealed off since. Most of Fortuna’s residents avoided the castle before everything had happened, regarding it as a sacred place. Now, they viewed it as a permanent mark on the land, the laboratory, and its experiments, something they wanted to pretend had never happened. No one wanted to think about the number of souls that had lost fueling Agnus and the Order of the Sword’s ambitions. Anything that made it easier to go there had been completely swept under the rug. But regardless, the two of them were now here, heading to the one place Nero was happy to never set foot in again for the rest of his life. He had had enough of the place and its endless traps during prior visits. Hopefully, this would be the last time he’d have to visit this cursed place.

“I guess neither of us notices things like that,” Nero said as they carefully rounded the corner, the near-blizzard conditions that seemed to plague this place not relenting in their passive-aggressive attempts to kill them both,” I never noticed you had white hair.”

V smirked knowingly. He had made a point of that. While the time had come on a few occasions to explain himself during their ordeal in Redgrave City, he had counted the concealment of his natural hair as an added bonus to possessing Nightmare. While he had come to terms with his unusual genetic quirk a long time ago, having a short time in his life where he mostly blended in with everyone else had given him much needed levity and clarity. He didn’t really miss it now, but it had been nice at the time.

As the castle came into full view, V stumbled slightly, catching himself before he could pitch forward and fall face-first into the snow. Nero reached to grab him, fearful that he might tumble off the edge of the mountain to his death. Upon realizing that he had regained his balance, he lowered his hand. But he kept the notion that he might need his assistance in the back of his mind. That had to be the dozenth time that he had almost fallen during their trek through the snow. It seemed that his balance issues were exacerbated by the unsteady ground. Nero was starting to see why V walked with a cane, despite the fact that he wasn’t entirely sure what was wrong with him.

“You want me to just carry you, or are you good,” Nero asked lightheartedly,” Wouldn’t want you to fall after all that shit I said to Vergil about you being safer here.”

V scoffed at the statement, slightly amused. Considering their previous interactions, V wasn’t entirely sure his father cared about what condition he was in. But, considering their relation to one another, some part of him wanted to believe that. As they stopped at the end of what seemed to be the remains of a balcony or tower of some sort, he stared across the vast ice field at the monstrous structure that loomed over them. Even at this distance, Fortuna Castle was an intimidating structure. It made him wonder how old this place truly was. What a stupendous work of art.

“If I needed you to carry me, you would know,” V said quietly as he admired the building, slightly entranced by its magnitude. He couldn’t have imagined that it was this big when Nero had first described it to him,” You said this castle supposedly belonged to the Dark Knight Sparda, correct? It’s rather impressive, wouldn’t you say?”

Nero nodded, joining him at what remained of the rail. The blizzard was behind them now, the chilly air quiet. Everything was rather serene, especially considering the circumstances that had led them here. He hoped the trip was worthwhile and that whatever books V was looking for were written in a language he could actually read. Nero himself had scanned through a few pages during his first visit and couldn’t make out much of it. It consisted of mostly strange symbols and what he assumed to be Latin. The writing had been foreign to him, even after having such an old faith shoved down his throat his entire life. It wouldn’t surprise him if he could read some of that, considering the type of shit he quoted on a regular basis, but still.

“It’s pretty big, yea,” Nero said plainly. Perhaps his experiences here had diluted the magic for him,” Last time I was up here, a tower almost fell on me. Let’s get out of here.”

V looked down below them. What remained of the staircase was broken, cracked, and iced over, a literal nightmare for him considering his lack of a cane. At that moment, he longed for the familiarity of his old improvised weapon. It had proved to be quite versatile. It hadn’t occurred to him until now that he was walking into a potentially dangerous situation totally unarmed. Nero started down the steps, looking back at him as if he were going to ask why he wasn’t following him but then thinking better of it. He was pretty sure he knew why. “I’m not gonna make fun of you if you change your mind”

Upon hearing his statement, V turned to look at him. He had a thoughtful look on his face, his mind combing over the probability of dying here. While he trusted Nero implicitly, putting his life entirely in his hands was a huge step for him. He’d never really had anyone he could actually trust in the first place. He was hoping that he’d live long enough to think back on this moment and dismiss it as his overactive mind trying to push him away from a perfectly logical space. He really was.

After a moment, he followed him down the stairs, immediately aware of how nither of them should be on them. Part of him felt immense guilt about the fact that he was the sole reason Nero was here right now, quite clearly in danger on his behalf. They made their way down them carefully, Nero extending his arm for him to grip when he had to step across particularly precarious spots. When they reached the very last large gap in the stairs, Nero jumped across first, gesturing for V to follow him. The older of the two glanced over the side. There was about a thirty-foot drop to the ground below them, if they actually cleared the rubble. V sighed. This was uncomfortably risky. While they might not die should they fall, he was relatively sure that they could be seriously hurt. The idea of breaking a leg and laying in the snow until they both froze to death was very low on his list of ways he’d like to die.

“Just jump across, V. I’ll catch you,” Nero assured him from the other side of the gap,” I’d fall over this rail before I dropped you. You’re fine. Don’t worry about it.”

But somehow, that was the exact opposite of what V wanted to hear. He didn’t doubt that, but he still didn’t want to see any harm come to Nero on his behalf. But his rational mind reminded him that Nero was nowhere near as fragile as he was. If he had survived an entire tower nearly falling on him on a previous trip, he could handle this.

“Oh, I have no doubts about that. I know you wouldn’t,” He said idly but sincerely as he used his eyes to guestimate the distance between himself and the other side,” It’s just that the last time I traversed an unstable structure, it collapsed and I nearly drowned in a river.”

Nero mentally kicked himself. Why did that sound so familiar? He was so sure he hadn’t been there when that had occurred but, somehow, he felt like he’d seen it happen. Perhaps from a distance? How weird.

A moment later, V finally worked up the nerve to attempt to join him. He stepped back before carefully jumping across. In an act that took them both by surprise, he overshot the space, practically catapulting himself into him. They both tumbled backward, knocking against the frozen railing with a hard thump. Nero caught V with his arm, stopping him from somersaulting over him and going head first over the railing. Despite the uncomfortable closeness and the fact that they were thoroughly tangled in on another while laying on a frozen staircase, Nero stifled a laugh. This was a mess. They were a mess. How the fuck had this even happened?

“See this, this is what I was trying to avoid. We-”

V attempted to sit up at the same time that Nero did, the two of them still tangled in one another. His sentence was cut off, however. Suddenly, there was an audible bumble as the ground beneath them vibrated. They exchanged a startled glance before the staircase crumbled and they both went careening towards the ground. As the staircase crumpled in on itself, Nero managed to grab a hold of V with his free hand, using his translucent blue wings to slow their fall by forcing them outward and up with a rapid twist, safely away from the collapsing structure. V yelped in surprise as they came to a comparatively gently landing, his knees buckling as his feet made contact with the ground. Nero slid over him, landing just a few feet in front of him.

After a moment, Nero exhaled and turned to find V steadying himself as he tried to climb to his feet. The younger of the two extended his arm to him, fully willing to lend him a helping hand. V took it this time, aware that he couldn’t quite regain his equilibrium. They stood for a moment in the center of several vertically and horizontally aligned stone pillars that were positioned on either side of the bridge that they needed to cross in order to enter the building. V could only hope that it was warmer inside.

They nodded to one another in confirmation before turning to make their way towards the massive front doors that led into the building. They were here for a purpose. Get in, find what they were looking for, and then leave. Pretty straight forward. What could possibly go wrong?

Note: Thanks for reading this chapter! It was really fun to get to work on! See you guys on Friday the 12th of June for the next installment! And thanks again for your ongoing support! I’d love to hear what you think about Magnolia’s abilities and the chapter as a whole. See you soon!