The farther the Sisterhood advanced, the more high-ranking angel corpses they found strewn across the damp earth. These massive, mutilated bodies continued to bleed, their sacred blood evaporating slowly, releasing swarms of golden motes into the air like fireflies over a summer field. Aside from the illumination of their power armor, these glowing specks were the only light in the darkness. But the sisters had no time to admire the spectacle—the blood-slick ground had turned into a scorching, rosemary-scented mire. They trudged through it, knee-deep in thick sludge, hacking their way through piles of corpses with explosive rifles, chainswords, and grenades.
At the center of the mire, the Four-Virtues angel representing the wind element—Temperance—stood like a hill, surrounded by craters from massive impacts. The Sisterhood had seen it get impaled by the spear of light that Catherine had become, then watched it fall into the darkness. As they approached, they saw the dense ring of upper-rank angel corpses scattered around it. Most bore deep slicing wounds. Two colossal arms lay in separate directions. While blunt trauma from the Butterfly Lady's fists was evident, much of the damage had been caused by bladed weapons. Night-vision lenses marked traces of hurricane-force impacts, confirming that Temperance had survived the initial blow and continued fighting fiercely. A brutal battle had taken place here.
Following a gut-wrenching instinct, the Sisterhood kept pressing forward—until they found her atop a mountain of angelic corpses. From a distance, Catherine looked as if she were still fighting, sword raised in hand, surrounded by fallen pseudo-angels.
They called her name and approached carefully.
Though they'd steeled themselves, grief still overwhelmed them.
A golden spear had pierced her abdomen, and another had stabbed into her chest from behind, pinning her to the corpses beneath. Her power armor was covered in damage. Her massive iron-gray steel wings were fully spread, providing one final act of defense. She stood frozen, burning with cold fury, as if she might raise her sword and strike again at any moment.
Only when they gently lifted her down from the corpse heap did they notice the vast, shadowy cavern behind her.
A human girl removed her helmet, her face awash with sorrow. She sniffled. "How are we supposed to explain this to the Lord? He loved her so much!"
"We don't need to explain anything," a synthetic woman replied calmly. "The Lord is inside that cavern. She stopped every pseudo-angel that tried to follow him. She did well. There is no greater honor."
"How can you be so cold, sister?!" the human girl cried. "Lady Catherine is dead!"
The synthetic woman shook her head.
"It's not that I don't love her, sister—I love her as I love the Lord. But this is the fate we were born to fulfill. The Sisterhood will forever remember and praise her noble sacrifice. The Lord will never forget her loyalty." She removed her helmet and looked tenderly at Catherine's body, cradled in the arms of another synthetic. "Rejoice for her, sisters. She fulfilled her purpose. She will stand forever at the Lord's side and bask in this unprecedented glory."
This isn't a dream! It's a nightmare drenched in the stench of rotting flesh!
Bayonetta's fingers twitched. She woke with a jolt.
She shot upright, glancing around, finding herself lying atop a sticky, purple slab of flesh. The stone platform that had carried her and the boy was now shattered behind her. The last thing she remembered was the lower-plane biological warship Insidious—after she had shot out its two eyes, it opened its maw and swallowed her and the raging current whole.
"Kid, where are you?" Bayonetta muttered. She had only one path to follow. Shifting into a panther, she sprinted forward, eventually reaching a vast internal chamber lined with pink muscle tendons. Above her, wrapped in connective tissue like a grotesque lymph node, she saw the boy suspended in a translucent red liquid, unconscious.
As she prepared to free him, a golden flash of light shot straight toward the organ holding the boy.
Bayonetta instantly raised her twin pistols and fired dozens of rounds in the blink of an eye.
The masked sage caught the bullets midair with a spell, appearing behind her the next instant.
He casually tossed the bullets—still charged with kinetic energy—back toward her. As his Swift Lightflow spell ended, Bayonetta's lightning-fast reflexes kicked in, matching bullet speed as she dodged. But while she evaded the deflected shots, it gave the sage an opening to resume his attack on the boy. Bayonetta snarled and moved just as quickly, kicking away the spearhead aimed at the boy in time. She pulled back and opened fire again, but the sage effortlessly cut her bullets from the air.
He then hurled his two broken spears like boomerangs at her, but she dodged with graceful precision. Not even the returning blades could touch her elegance.
Though neither landed a decisive blow, both blades and bullets struck Insidious's internal organs, unleashing cascades of putrid blood.
"Mind telling me where your opponent went?" Bayonetta asked with a smirk. She eyed the long spear in his hand and the broken mask on his face. "I'm not worried about him, I just want to know how much it cost you to escape from him."
But the masked sage didn't answer. "Stay out of this, witch. It has nothing to do with you."
Bayonetta responded with bullets. "Sorry. The kid's still useful to me."
As gravity began to drag him downward, the Arcanist quickly reignited his jet engines to keep himself balanced in the shifting environment. He twisted his body and slammed down onto a mosaic-tiled circular plaza. Countless droplets hovered overhead. Ahead of him, ruined buildings floated chaotically in a sea of deep violet clouds.
The entire place radiated eerie, unnatural energy.
He had followed the manta-like lower-plane being deep into unknown territory, risking permanent entrapment. Who would've guessed there'd be such a vast, phantasmal space beneath Mount Fimbulwinter? But the moment he arrived, he felt it—there was a portal here, as his senses had told him. In fact, there were many portals. Some as massive as mountains, others no larger than a fingertip. All of them dormant and unactivated. Together, they formed a labyrinthine terrain that left Solomon stymied.
He was certain many of these portals were the work of the witch clan—if the witches had guarded access points to the lower planes, then they would have built countless safeguards to prevent unauthorized outsiders or the sages from entering. Only by mastering the correct traversal method could one reach the true Gate to Hell. A single wrong step could teleport you to an unknown place. Getting lost would be the best-case scenario. More likely, you'd end up dead in some impossibly dangerous realm.
As an outsider, Solomon had no choice but to guess.
(End of Chapter)
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