Kal-Tar's POV
"Initiating jump sequence in 3, 2, 1," Rem-Tul said over the telepathic channel that all members of the Black Horde shared. My heart sped up a touch as a hexagon shimmered miles ahead, connecting us to a solar system light-years away.
The jump gate was open.
"Grabbing hold of the dimensional signature," Rem-Tul ordered from the deck below me, hunched over the holographic controls. Lines of demonic and dimensional energy circled around the console and the ship, agitated by what came next. "Space Mages, make the connection."
And they did. A tsunami of dimensional energy poured into the hexagon, cast from the energy stores we had prepared beforehand. Expertly crafted runes guided the connection, courtesy of forgemaster deserters who had fled the Demon Lords and now served the Horde.
The jump gate blossomed, golden eldritch and blue space energy swirling together and spreading outward. It stabilized when it reached the size of a large moon. Perfect for the bulk of our army to cross through to Mars, a few short minutes away from Earth.
But when I looked across, a different star pattern greeted me. We were at the very edge of the solar system, so far out that our ships barely felt the tug of the system's sun.
The planets were dots on the horizon, distant flickers I could only make out thanks to my demonic heritage and Nok boosting my physicality.
"Talk to me," I called out to my navigators and pilot.
"It's a seamless space lock," Kan-Mur breathed. He was the foremost space mage of the Horde and was over 500 years old. Four hundred of those years he'd spent in deliberate isolation on a planet orbiting a black hole with accelerated time. In that torturous orbit, he'd forged himself into one of the most powerful demons in the galaxy.
"It's basically blocked all remote travel into the solar system. Anybody jumping in will have to come out of this portal," Mur said. "But the power to hold space like that... even the Demon Lords would struggle."
A few other navigators muttered.
"Can we get around it?" I asked.
"Maybe..." Mur hesitated. "The spellwork is fairly complicated and vastly intricate, dotted with runic symbology I've never encountered before. Frankly, it would take us hours to unravel it... but there's nothing to stop him from modifying the spell on the fly or casting a new one once we get past the first one."
"Correct me if I'm wrong," I said slowly, "but it would take a Grandmaster in multiple disciplines of demon magic to pull off what you just described."
Mur swallowed. "At the very least. He's certainly not as experienced as we are, but he's come very, very far in a short period of time. And he knows how to spend his monstrous energy well."
Kaecilius warned us of his energy stores specifically. He had emphasized that they were functionally endless, despite what his personal stores might suggest.
I looked through the portal one more time. There was most definitely a trap waiting for us on the other end of that portal.
"And what about a stealthy approach, flying into his system the old-fashioned way?" I asked.
"With his mastery of Space... it would be child's play to relocate his army once he senses us... and given his reputation, it's going to be quite an army."
"The Mirror Dimension?" Nok, my symbiote, suggested with a rumbling voice. I shook my head.
"He's going to be waiting for us there as well. He's capable of dimensional travel."
"So, our only real options are to enter into an obvious trap or take our chances with a stealth flight," I said. I turned the question to the rest of the crew, and there was little question as to what they chose.
Bela, the leader of our fighters, and her symbiote, Thorn, practically cheered at the opportunity to meet our opponent in open battle. To quote her, "I love an ambush as much as the next Vanegarian, but there's just something proper about bloodying yourself against an opponent."
The mages, engineers, and other supporters more or less chose the same, with different reasoning. With a consensus chosen, I gave the order to close the gate, and Rem had our mages withdraw their energy from the portal. To their utter surprise and mine, however, it did not close completely. The jump gate stayed open.
And from the crack in space, a man covered in the strangest armor I'd ever seen slipped through with a sword hovering by his side. It was long and slender and screamed with power that made my insides do flips. His armor felt several times more dangerous.
It reminded me of one of our Kylntar brothers, except it was completely artificial. Runes flickered on and off, and I felt a great mind living within the folds of the metal armor that carried the protector of Earth. And it was attached to a truly absurd store of energy.
It seemed endless and only partly demonic. The other half was the same strange energy Kaecilius had warned us about in detail. Functionally, it worked the same as demonic energy, but it was more abstract and esoteric. When combined with demonic energy, it turned the Nephilim's attacks conceptual. To his knowledge, there was no way to stop it. Even Lauren, his former employer, had no success.
His advice had been overwhelming force: kill him before he really got going. Underestimating him was what got the demons that used to rule Limbo, Lauren, and even the Mad Titan killed. Dante Sparda was not the kind of man you held back against. You pulled out all the stops and hit him with your Godkiller.
And we had quite the Godkiller indeed.
A psychic virus Nok had accidentally stumbled upon 80 years ago when we were up against our first demon prince. We were sure we were dead until a psychic spell went awry and he tapped into an aberrant dimension housing the virus. It tried infecting Nok, but his mind was too unconventional for it to latch on to. The demon prince's wasn't.
Nirvana, he called it.
The virus trapped you in your own mind, subjecting you to a perfect illusion of your life while it slowly devoured your mind and energy. We'd kept it isolated and fed, siloing it off in the dying minds of demons we'd captured over the years, feeding it increasingly unremarkable lifeforms to strategically weaken it.
Twenty-four hours ago, we'd primed it with the minds of an entire Chitauri army, supercharging it. Thanks to the safeguards we'd installed, we'd never truly lose control of it, nor could it spread of its own accord, but it would mentally eviscerate whoever we unleashed it on, regardless of how powerful they were.
Nok was confident it would be enough to kill Dante Sparda, but in the event that the Nephilim could shake it off, we had millions of blasters pointed in his direction, as well as our army.
As I stared at the Nephilim standing proud in space, I couldn't help but smirk. Compared to his toys, the demon himself didn't feel so overwhelmingly powerful. Even I had more raw energy than he did. An indulgent, almost careless part of me wondered what made him so special.
I suppose I'd find out before I killed him and retrieved the Necrosword.
"Prepare Nirvana!" I yelled, sending out a telepathic command that rippled through the entire Horde. It jolted everybody back into action.
Runes burned into the minds and bodies of thousands of jump ships, Leviathans, and hive creatures, compelling them to concentrate raw mind energy and unleash it. A reddish tsunami big enough to drown entire worlds crashed into space, swallowing everything not attached to a symbiote mind.
Metal slid off Dante Sparda's face, unveiling his amused expression. He was his brother's mirror in every way except the eyes and mouth. Vergil was stoic almost to the point of ridiculousness. Dante, it would seem, reveled in combat a touch too much.
He snapped his fingers, and a bubble of psychic energy the size of his moon appeared around him, likely to stop the approaching tide. I guffawed at the choice, almost calling him a fool out loud. Didn't he realize the construct was still connected to his mind?
Then the runes appeared.
Thousands and thousands of them, all alien. They appeared in empty space, carved into reality in a naked display of power. The psionic moon was breathtaking to behold. Looping arrays of indecipherable runework linked together into some kind of massive amplification matrix that made my energy core ache.
The viral tide washed over the runes painted in space and slowed down dramatically. First, it spread at twice the speed of light, then well under it, until it moved like actual flowing water and hit the sphere.
The massive floating sphere hummed, and immediately I realized its true purpose.
The mental energy was being siphoned away, rapidly condensed into a floating metal core the size of Dante's head.
He spoke for the very first time when the strange ritual concluded.
"So, are you going to try that again, or are we going to cross swords like proper demons?" he smirked. "I'll even give you all a handicap. I won't even use my runes or my higher affinities."
My throat went dry, and hope died in my chest.
What he'd just done couldn't, shouldn't be possible.
Did we underestimate him so much? I...
"Kal?" Nox spoke to me. "What do you want to do?"
"I—I..."