“Away!”

Demons clawing at her back, Brunnhilde the Valkyrie worked sword-and-fist towards the craggy stage where the closest mortal friend she’d ever had sat. Forget the fact that two infernal armies, one led by Daimon Hellstrom and one by his father Lucifer, were locked in all-out war. Forget that the Defenders, like vultures among eagles, were caught in the middle fighting alongside the seraphim of Heaven. Forget even, for a moment, the violation she had suffered at the hands of a former friend but a day (she assumed; time churned by slowly in Hell) ago.

Patsy Walker, Hellcat, was her friend. Practically her sister. If it were up to Brunnhilde, the flame-haired woman would fly on winged steeds as one of the Valkyrie. Her heart, her soul – as a mortal, was that strong. So Brunnhilde believed.

“Hellcat,” breathed the Valkyrie, leaping and landing next to her friend. “Patsy! We have no time to waste. The Defenders hath arrived. Thou art saved.”

Patsy, still dressed in the black satin gown she’d almost been married in before the rude intrusion of war, sat in her twisted throne and didn’t so much as look up.

“Patsy?” Brunnhilde took a step closer, placing a strong hand on the bride’s thin, pale arm. Patsy wrenched it away immediately.

“Don’t touch me!” she cried, a disgusted scowl on her painted face. “Go away.”

A scaly, brownish creature was crawling up Brunnhilde’s back. One stab over her shoulder with Dragonfang and, demonblood on the stage’s rocky floor, the annoyance was ended.

“Thou art affected,” said the Valkyrie firmly. “Daimon controls thy—“

“No! No. I’m in control. I’m already saved,” Patsy said. Long legs crossed, she went back to watching the war. “My prince – my husband’s out there fighting for me right now. When he’s done, we’ll live happily ever after. Together. King and queen.”

“Patsy, this is not thy way. We must take leave!”

“Oh, yes!” Patsy bobbed her head playfully. “To go home with the soulless magician, and the himbo king, and the monster! To go back to that creepy house where all the wrong things echo and we hide in the shadows until something comes and gets us, and then we have to fight again. Instead of being queen of my own kingdom. Instead of finally living an easy life. “You got out of it, Brunnhilde, but when we fought that thing Alice, he brought back the madness. My madness. And maybe there’s still a little with me know, and maybe that’s good. Because I know what I want.”

Patsy nodded towards the black blood squirts and swords clanging in the wasteland below.

“You go back to your monsters,” she said. “I hear you’re practically one of them, after what you let Isaac do to you.” The Valkyrie gripped her sword’s hilt so tight that she almost broke skin. The rage, the guilt, was contained. In the process, eight years of friendship were torn aside. Patsy tapped her sharpened nails on the armrest. “I’ve got my own.”

Matt Murdock prided himself on his ability to get around. He understood this feeling to be common to most blind people--the stubborn refusal to believe that you need someone else's help to navigate through the world of the sighted--but in his case, a case that included four dramatically enhanced senses and one extrasensory radar, that pride took on a whole other meaning. Nobody could navigate a maze of tenement rooftops like him. Nobody could track a single smarmy stool pigeon through Josie's Bar while surrounded by two dozen of the pigeon's angry drinking buddies as easily as he.

But after five minutes in Satan's fortress of blasted scarlet rock, he was about as lost as he ever had been, his only beacon the shimmering heated shape of Mephisto striding ahead of him. He was entrusting the devil to lead him to his friends. If he'd ever done anything stupider, it wasn't coming to mind.

"I hope," Mephisto growled, "that you are not counting on the Supreme Sorcerer to free you from our bargain once I've released him."

Daredevil didn't reply. He had to admit, the thought had occurred to him...

"I think you will find that Strange's power is much diminished beneath this Black Veil Hellstrom has cast over my kingdom. Else he would have broken free on his own by now. Your soul belongs to me, Murdock. Once this final detail is seen to."

Matt nodded once, sharply. If Strange and the others weren't freed, there was a very real chance that Daimon Hellstrom's hold on Hell would become so firmly cemented that he'd move on to the Earth Dimension. What was one soul compared to that, no matter how attached to it Matt might be?

Mephisto held up a hand, calling a halt. "We near the center of the stronghold."

Several steps ahead of the demon lord, the tunnel widened, and became a giant cavern. Inside that cavern, a tremendous wind pounded the rock with swirling mountains of red sand. Daredevil should have heard the cacophony long before they reached it, but he was finding that nothing here obeyed his accustomed rules of reality.

Mephisto put a hand to the tunnel wall and, for a moment, he neither moved nor spoke. Then, straightening, he said, "I see."

He snapped his fingers, and the roaring of the blood-red sandstorm was overlapped by the wail of a human being in torment.

"What are you--?"

"Silence!"

Daredevil might have pressed the issue, but he was interrupted by a body exploding from the wall of swirling sand. Before it had struck the rock floor and skidded to a halt, Matt had identified it by its heartbeat, scent, and shape as Regina Garney, mother to Mark Garney, the little boy they had come here to save. She had been the one screaming.

"What are you doing?" Daredevil whipped his club at the demon and dropped to his knees at Regina's side. "She's only flesh and blood, Mephisto! Be gentle!"

The club passed right through the demon and rebounded off two walls before returning to Daredevil's hand. Mephisto didn't even look at it.

"I had to pull her out of a containment circle and across several miles quickly enough that she wouldn't be torn to shreds by this bone sand, Murdock. If you wanted gentle, you should have made your bargain with the Care Bears."

Regina was just barely conscious. It was remarkable that she was even breathing. "What about the others?"

"I'm working on it, you annoying pestilence."

Two new screams joined the roar of the sand, and a moment later, the swirling wall spit Doctor Strange and Devil-Slayer onto the tunnel floor. These two didn't seem as damaged as Regina had been, but their clothing was in tatters, their flesh bleeding freely. Doctor Strange was the first to regain his wits.

"Daredevil. What--?"

Before the question could be voiced, a new sound was laid over the sand-roar. Not an improbably amplified scream this time, but rather the cry of a wild animal. A very angry wild animal. Strange's head whipped around at the sound.

"Oh no."

The sand stopped. All of it, frozen in mid-air like a high-speed photograph of blood red snow, and the noise of it could no longer dull that scream coming from somewhere in its depths.

At Daredevil's feet, Regina muttered her son's name. "Mark..."

The wall of hanging sand ripped open, and a dark orange behemoth strode through the gap like Moses through the Red Sea. Leathern wings unfurled from the creature's hunched back, and the smell of brimstone and sulfur coming off of it was almost too much for Daredevil's already overloaded senses to bear.

"Those are our father's toys, demon," the Gargoyle growled.

"Demon?" Mephisto demanded. "I am much more than that, you ignorant maggot! Or didn't your father tell you?"

"Our father told us only that your continued existence is due solely to the fact that you have ever amused him, pathetic one."

The Gargoyle was dangerously close now. Daredevil knew well what this creature had done to Valkyrie, and he knew he should be rushing his friends to safety, but... he was getting a strange radar reading off the demon, as if one form was laid over another. One was the orange monster that was visible to everyone else, and the other was that of a small boy. A very familiar small boy...

"Maarrrkkkk..." Regina Garney's half-conscious voice was a plaintive moan now.

"Fool of a fool!" Mephisto roared, striding into the parted sandstorm. "Hardly born, and already you mock your betters!" Something like a crimson bolt of electricity with the inner texture of bloody ground meat exploded from Mephisto's hand. The bolt took the Gargoyle dead on.

He laughed in reply.

An orange bolt flashed from one of the Gargoyle's claws, washing over Mephisto and into the tunnel passage. Daredevil threw himself down over Regina as Doctor Strange erected a shield. Even through it, the power behind the beam skated across Matt's senses like electricity and fire and tingling frostbite all in one.

"Stephen..." Devil-Slayer said. "We can't stay here."

"I know. My powers may be limited, but I can at least take us to the others. Prepare yourselves."

Still maintaining the shield, Stephen Strange crossed his wrists above his head, muttered an incantation, and teleported the Defenders away in a flash of green and white light, leaving Mephisto and Gargoyle to settle the dispute on their own.

The Ebony Blade rang against the Soulsword, and the Black Knight threw his weight against his opponent.

"Almost had me there, Whitman," Daimon grinned, his oversized canines gleaming as he allowed the Knight to push him back. "That must be frustrating. I was distracted by the arrival of my father's army. You could have ended all of this with one stroke of your sword, but alas!"

Dane didn't say anything. Instead, he angled himself out of the path of the Soulsword and dropped his Ebony Blade, severing the lock they'd created. He tried to bring the Blade up at a shallow angle, to rip the Helllord open from waist to opposite shoulder, but Daimon was already dancing backward, out of his reach. A slash opened across Hellstrom's bare torso, but it was hardly the killing stroke the Black Knight had intended.

"That hurt!" Daimon roared, and waved a hand. The soil at Dane's feet exploded in flame. His armor’s joints began to fuse immediately, his flesh cooked beneath the metal. Dane threw an arm over his face and dove forward, somersaulting across open ground and coming up to one knee just in time to block as Daimon swung for his neck.

"I have more important things to worry about than you, meat!"

"Then go deal with them, Hellstrom," the Black Knight grunted, fighting against his opponent's superior strength and the nearly welded joints of his battle armor. "We'll see how far you get before I take your head."

The Hulk roared and plunged his left fist into the earthy black morass of Blackheart's body. As had happened with the right fist, this one also became stuck in the demon's torso. His opponent didn't exactly have a face--more like two red embers burning in vaguely eye-like locations in his head--but Bruce Banner was sure the creature was smiling anyway.

"Didn't your mother ever tell you the legend of the tarbaby, monster?" Blackheart asked. "Or is your intellect so far gone that even these common sense lessons are lost to you?"

Nearby, Nightcrawler cartwheeled over the heads of two horned demons and cannonballed into a third. "Doctor Banner!" he cried. "Do you require assistance?"

The Hulk grinned. "Tell you what, elf. The Incredible Hulk ain't gonna need no priest's help until he's dead. And maybe not even then."

Flexing his massive shoulders, applying the leverage he'd created when he trapped his second hand, the Hulk ripped both arms outward, tearing Blackheart completely in half and scattering pieces of him across the battlefield. The demon's upper and lower halves toppled to the ground, and the Hulk proceeded to stamp them flat, saving the part with those expressionless red eyes for last.

"Brainless beast," Blackheart's head growled as the Hulk pounded his chest into black gravel. "Later for you."

And then, before the Hulk's foot could descend on the head, it vanished, melting into the ground like ice into a pool of warm water. He was gone.

"Aw no," the Hulk said. He wheeled around, absently shoving aside a knot of charging demons, and scanned the battlefield with his narrowed emerald eyes. "You don't get off that easy, freakshow..."

A wall of obsidian earth exploded upward behind the Black Knight and collapsed over him, engulfing his head and yanking him backward from his deadlock with Hellstrom.

Straightening, Hellstrom laughed. "Very good, brother. Good show."

The wall of earth had shaped itself into Blackheart's eight-foot tall form. The Black Knight's head was engulfed in the demon's fist, dangling him several feet above the ground. The Ebony Blade flashed out in an arc, but Blackheart's body just reformed over the gashes it created.

"I will see to this flesh, Daimon," Blackheart said. "You must engage your father and protect your bride."

Daimon saluted him with the sword. "I'll be back, brother. This shouldn't take long." He turned and began slicing his way through the demonic and heavenly forces, toward his father. Toward Satan.

Somehow, the Black Widow had managed to get herself completely cut off from the others, surrounded on all sides by leathery red flesh and gleaming black claws. Despite her years as an Avenger and her more recent time as a Defender, she simply wasn't wired to think in terms of having a team to back her up. Too many years as a lone espionage agent. So now she was paying for it, nowhere near either her fellow Defenders or the small army of angels that had accompanied them down into this place.

Her Widow's Bite had managed to hold many of them off, and as for the ones it hadn't, well-placed hand and foot strikes had taken care of them. But now the charge was getting low on her bracelets, and swinging her legs and arms was beginning to feel like swinging fully-loaded barbells. She wasn't an archangel, nor was she a gamma-irradiated behemoth or even an acrobatic mutant. Sooner or later, they were going to tear her down.

But, damn them, she was going to make them bleed for it.

This was what she was thinking, blasting a demon directly in his wide-open jaws, when a nearby flash of bright white light turned her vision into a useless blank slate. She stumbled back, blinking furiously, and felt a leather-skinned mass hit her in the abdomen, throwing her to the ground and landing on top of her. The impact brought her vision back online, just in time to see the demon she'd just blasted throwing its hideous mouth wide.

"I'm going to eat that pretty face right off your head!" The demon roared, its maw still smoking from the blast.

"Some of us like her face right where it is," a familiar voice said, and the blunt end of a red billy club slammed into the side of the creature's face, spraying its teeth out the opposite side of its mouth. The club rebounded away, and was replaced with a red boot, smashing the demon off of her.

"Matthew?"

"Didn't expect to see you here, 'Tasha," Daredevil grinned, offering her his hand. Behind him, the Devil-Slayer and Doctor Strange were driving the wall of demons back while Regina Garney lay curled in a fetal position at their feet.

"Matthew!" She sprang to her feet and threw her arms around him.

"Whoa, easy on the secret identity there, babushka," Daredevil laughed, clutching her to him. "I'm happy to see you too. But how did you guys get here?"

"The angels." She gestured at the winged men with their flaming swords, engaging the demons in bloody battle all over the field. "But I'll explain all that later. Right now, we have to help Dane get to Daimon Hellstrom--"

"Dane?"

"The Black Knight." The Widow tightened her bracelets, and gave Matt the most honest smile she'd given anyone in a long time. "What do you say, cowboy? Daredevil and the Black Widow, together again, one more time?"

"That's right babe," he agreed, not allowing his own smile to falter until Natasha had turned away. "One more time."

Together, they leapt into the fray.

Blackheart was watching the armored fleshbag squirm in his grip, idly wondering whether to just let him suffocate or perhaps pop his head off his shoulders instead, when he heard and felt the approach of a large herd of stampeding cattle.

Or, as he found out moments later, the approach of one very angry Incredible Hulk.

The Hulk's fist met the side of Blackheart's head, completely annihilating it in a spray of burning coals and gravel. The demon stumbled, head reforming the instant the Hulk pulled his fist back, and turned his burning gaze on the man-monster. He was about to say something clever and threatening, but then the Hulk's massive, square jaws closed on his outstretched arm, severing the hand holding the Knight.

Dane Whitman dropped to the ground, Blackheart's hand falling apart around his face and finally--finally--allowing him to breathe the fetid air of Hell again. He spent exactly two seconds filling his lungs, and then started tearing at the fused, useless armor around his chest and torso. It was more hindrance than help now. He cast his helmet aside too, leaving him bare from the waist up.

He stood, scanned the battlefield, and spotted Daimon Hellstrom, wading through the demonic ranks toward Satan himself.

"Thank you, Doctor Banner!" he cried, and began moving as quickly as he could toward the Son of Satan.

"Whatever," the Hulk replied. He chewed up the mass of sulfurous earth he'd bitten off of Blackheart, and spit it back at the creature's expressionless face. Then the two monsters lunged at each other.

"Ah, Borniel. How are you, old friend?"

Satan seized the flaming sword of a passing archangel and pulled it and its bearer out of the sky. The angel hit the ground hard, tried to get back to his feet, and was driven down again when Satan's foot landed on his spine. The lord of Hell's hands closed around the angel's feathered wings and, with a grisly ripping-crunching sound, tore them free of his back.

"You should have come with me, Borniel," Satan said, tossing the wings absently into the swarming armies that surrounded them. "I know you were tempted to. And maybe you wouldn't have come to this end if you had."

"You... can... never win... Morningstar..."

"Says the third-string archangel bleeding to death all over the soil of Hell. I don't think your opinion matters that much to me at this point, Borniel."

The sound behind him was no more than a whisper, barely audible over the sounds of war, but Satan heard it, and spun, meeting Daimon Hellstrom's thrust with the flaming blade he'd just taken from the archangel.

Satan smiled. "Let's ask my son what he thinks."

"Your time is done, father! You are nothing to me. I have defeated you before, and I will do so again!"

"You have caused me setbacks, Daimon, for which I am immensely proud of you. But you lack the proper respect, and for that, I regret I shall have to--"

Whatever Satan regretted, no one ever found out, for at that moment the archangel Borniel leapt onto his back, throwing his well-muscled arm over the demon lord's eyes.

"I defy you, Morningstar!" the angel bellowed as Satan staggered backward. "I defy you!"

"And so do I," Daimon Hellstrom smiled. He lifted the Soulsword and, with a roar of triumph, split both Satan and the archangel Borniel in twain.

Illyana Rasputin pulled with all her considerable strength at the chains pinning her to the ground. On her right, Namor the Sub-Mariner was still and quiet, maybe dead after being exposed to the dehydrating heat of Hell for so long. To her left, Nighthawk groaned in half-conscious agony as the gaping holes in his back from which his demon wings used to spring bled freely.

And all around them, a battle that they had absolutely nothing to do with threatened to spill over them at any moment, killing all three while they lay there, chained and helpless.

So intent was she on breaking free, that Illyana didn't feel the rush of cool, fresh air against her cheek. She heard the angel-song though--the low, musical, almost molecular hum of Heaven given form and purpose.

The most beautiful man she'd ever seen landed on the ground in front of her, utterly naked and glorious, with white feathered wings springing from his back. Without a word, he raised his flaming sword and brought it down hard at her.

Her bonds fell away with a heavy clank, the sword splitting the hell-wrought iron links like so many dry twigs. Illyana blinked, let the chains wrapped around her fall away, and rubbed at her wrists.

"Thank you," she said uncertainly. "My friends... they're hurt..."

"That they are," the archangel replied, turning his pupil-less white eyes on Namor. "But they are no longer your concern, Darkchylde. You must go now, and reclaim your birthright."

"My bir--?"

Of course. The Soulsword. Symbol of her power and the pain she had endured to earn it. Hellstrom had taken it away from her, but the sword was literally a piece of her soul. She knew where it was, even across the pandemonium of this battlefield, as surely as she knew the location of her right hand.

Without another word, she summoned a stepping disk and teleported away.

Satan fell, and his army began to crumble around him.

Daimon Hellstrom looked on this, pleased at the sight of his own forces tearing the other demons to bits as they scattered in disorganized panic. It wouldn't take long to rout them, and considering Satan had also been working against the archangels all this time, there should be few enough of them left at the end that they could be dealt with quickly and efficiently.

This was the greatest moment of Daimon Hellstrom's life, and he spread his arms, feeling the heat of hell on his bare chest, reveling in it. The only thing that would make this more perfect, in fact, was if his bride was at his side. He looked around, back toward their hellish thrones.

Patsy was seated, shaking her head calmly as Brunnhilde the Valkyrie gesticulated wildly over her. Behind Brunnhilde, an archangel Daimon recognized as the lead troublemaker himself, Gabriel, alighted on the stage. As Daimon watched in horror, Gabriel leaned over and seized Patsy roughly by the arm.

"No!" Daimon began moving toward them, cutting down enemy and ally alike--anyone foolish enough to keep him from his bride. Gabriel and Brunnhilde had just earned themselves a special place on the new Lord of Hell's priority list. He would visit agonies on the both of them that would make the tortures of Saint Florian look like an erotic massage in comparison. He would--

Something punched him in the chest, stopping him in his tracks. He looked down.

Three feet of ebony steel was jutting out of his bare sternum, a black ichor that might have been blood in the days when he was at least partly human pouring out of the wound and onto the ground, where it disappeared instantly into the ever-thirsty soil. Daimon looked at it with a strange, detached curiosity, even going so far as to finger the end of the blade. A line of black spit fell from his lips and slid across the sword before joining the rest on the ground.

"Whitman," he said. His voice was weak and good-humored, almost amused.

"Goodbye, Hellstrom," the Black Knight said from behind him. And then he twisted the Blade.

Daimon Hellstrom screamed as all his hellborne might, all the energies he'd absorbed from the various Death Gods, exploded out through the hole in his chest in a miles-high geyser of black, foaming power. The column roared into the ebony sky, higher than the naked eye could see, and when it seemed it could go no farther, it sledgehammered into some unseen barrier that encapsulated all the land.

And cracked it.

Great jagged rends of white and blue spider-webbed across the firmament, spreading to every corner of Hell within the span of a heartbeat. For a moment, everyone on the battlefield paused to look up.

In the next, the sky exploded. And the Black Veil finally fell away.

Illyana was in transport via her stepping disk for only an instant, but when she popped out the other side, everything had changed.

What looked like great chunks of the sky were raining all around, giant slabs of black, shot through with red and edged with white, crushing dozens of combatants with every impact. Illyana took this in, and then spotted Daimon Hellstrom nearby, appropriately skewered. Just like a pig.

The Soulsword was lying at his feet, dropped and forgotten. Illyana snatched it up and, without another word, teleported away.

They began to drop, from the opaque waves of the River Styx, through the City of Dis’s gates topped with the heads of the heretical and traitorous (all of which stopped their moaning for once to watch the spectacle), over the overgrown Wood of Suicides and right up to the very Throne of Hell itself – the demons, under both Hellstrom and Satan, fell as though struck by a sudden, horrible illness whose symptoms are to bray, jerk horn to claw, and cease. Shards of the Black Veil showered down on their bodies as the power of all the hate, lust, gluttony, violence the Son of Satan had ingested went back into the musty humidity of the air and became mixed with it. If it was possible, Hell was only getting hotter.

Nightcrawler watched the falling warriors, still fighting the weakening survivors, and wondered if demons in Hell could actually die. It was the sort of thought that tip-toed across Kurt’s mind as he lay halfway between sleep and waking during late hours in his humble Vatican room. On some level, perhaps many levels, he was happier to be here now than there. One army was fading quickly, at least. And there were people like the Devil-Slayer who, though badly cut, as if he’d been subjected to some banned medieval torture device, was making sure that no infernal creature remained standing.

“The armies – I believe they’re falling!” Nightcrawler called out to the Slayer. The latter held a mace in one hand, a shield in the other, and brought both down on a straggler.

“Looks like all Hell’s falling apart,” said the Devil-Slayer.

Kurt appeared at his side, bamf, in a brimstone-hinted burst of crimson. “Have we won?”

“Really, I can’t tell what’s happening. All I know is that some are still standing.” The Slayer continued to hack away, and Kurt got the feeling that he was barely being noticed.

“Then we continue to fight,” Nightcrawler concluded. “I have faith. And if not, we go out doing right. If I’m meant to die, I hope it is with a sword in my hand.”

Swinging the mace with one hand, the Slayer reached deep into his cape and, without a word, tossed a curved, circular-cuffed blade Kurt’s way. Nightcrawler laughed.

“Finally! All this swordplay and I was feeling left out.”

Back to the battle, the comfortable weight in his hand, Kurt Wagner noticed the emptying field, the ferocity that was leaving even the best hellions. That and the sheer power loose in the air, very much a part of it. Something had happened, a shift that he could breathe in, and all Kurt wanted to do was laugh and swashbuckle away.

No one noticed the lithe female figure popping in and out across the cooling field of war. With all that was happening, the focus was you and your own, even for Illyana. Cold nibbles were darting up and down her left arm up to her shoulder and out to the tip of her shimmering Soulsword. Magik, Darkchylde – she took long, confident strides until she stood under a monstrous shadow, fully eclipsed save for the glint of her spreading armor.

“—cook your flesh and crush your bones,” Blackheart rasped in the Hulk’s face, the two eight-foot bodies clashing hand-gripping-hand. His breath was full of sulfur and bile, but the voice suddenly shifted higher and higher. “And then, Bruce,” said the voice of Betty Banner, “I can play with your soul here for all eternity.”

“Keepin talkin’,” the Hulk grunted. “Keep talkin’! ‘Cuz the madder I get – the madder I get, the stronger...”

He stopped as Blackheart’s vague face went to a blank expression. Something silvery jutted out just underneath his chin and made two quick swipes to each side and his head, a jack-o-lantern of embers and earth, fell off his disintegrating body and rolled to the toe of a metal boot.

“No,” said the Hulk, shrugging his shoulders rhythmically and flaring his nostrils. “No you just didn’t. He was mine. He was—“

“He was mine,” said the Darkchylde. She plucked Blackheart’s head and held it close to her whitened eyes. Top to bottom, she was dressed in armor made of no metal the doctor in Hulk could recognize. “He was ugly to me before.”

“Yeah, and he’s gonna be real ugly when he comes back for his head. I oughta let him take a few chunks outta you before I kick his—“

Under her jagged helmet, she shot him the disgusted look of one whose very character has been questioned. “This is the Soulsword. Blackheart won’t be reforming. Even if he could, he doesn’t have much of a reason now.” Her tone and voice didn’t match the teenage girl they came from. “His brother is dead – I pulled this sword out of him myself.” There were hints of oily blood and soil still on the blade. Darkchylde didn’t care to clean it, but she dropped Blackheart’s head and kicked it away.

“So we’re done?” He’d lost the chance to give a good beating, but maybe the Hulk could finally leave this place – these people – and get the hell back to the life of a gamma-irradiated monster.

She shook her head and waved the Soulsword to include all directions. “The fighting’s stopped. I—“

“Fine.” The monster stepped up to her, his presence making her body doll-like in stature, then lumbered past, cracking his knuckles in a sound like rivets shot into steel. “Headbusting’s done for the day then. Thanks, princess.”

He walked onto the battlefield, crunching gasping creatures beneath his steps like so much gravel. The Darkchylde’s armor was quickly becoming but a hint of a memory of a glimmer as she watched him. Light swallowed Illyana. The wandering dust trail she left obscured whoever retrieved Blackheart’s face and ate it whole with a hoarse, satisfying sigh.

“Did you feel that? Of course you didn’t.”

Mephisto wasn’t used to being on the receiving end when it came to chatter. A devil can sweet-talk. With a lash of the tongue a good devil can make paradise seem like not nearly enough. Of the many prides, the countless powers, a devil like Mephisto holds the spoken word as priceless. Now all the abilities and tricks he had were next to nothing and for once the high demon had little to say.

His wiry arms waved, weaving what forces they could. Columns of jagged stone rose from the soil with his gesture, went until neither he nor his enemy could see the top. The columns then crumbled, kicking up so much debris that for a moment the mass of leathery muscle they fell upon might well have been gone. But Mephisto could tell before things settled that it was pointless.

Dressed in a fresh layer of soil and dirt, the Gargoyle stood his ground.

“It’s over, Mephisto,” he said. A few steps towards Mephisto and the devil found himself taking almost as many back. “Hellstrom is dead. Blackheart is dead. That’s what we felt.” Then the Gargoyle slapped him. Like some insolent child or inane housewife, or perhaps more like a wildcat would provoke its prey, this young creature slapped Mephisto; over and over, light enough to mostly annoy, just hard enough to hurt. “Now we’re whole. The child and the gargoyle are one and all the power that comes with being the infernal child is ours. Prince of Hell! Haha!”

Another slap.

“You’re an ugly, confused amalgam of a helpless little boy and a lonely old man in an oversized package,” said Mephisto. He caught one flailing claw and tried to sink his own nails into the thick orange hide. “Lucifer is even more of a fool for...for...”

When he found that his clutching was of no use, the inability to speak returned to Mephisto. He glanced up into the hungry, almost lustful eyes of the Gargoyle. They didn’t match. One was stark yellow with flecks of oak and darkness, its pupil vertical; the other was circular with an iris like an undisturbed pool of water. They flinched, and Mephisto suddenly understood what the mortal victim of an animal attack must feel like. The Gargoyle struck, over and over again, and Mephisto’s pink flesh opened in a cluttered mess of teeth-marks and gashes. The creature was taking fast and thin breaths, grunting and growling the language of murderous abandon. Claws went deeper than flesh and bone, each tooth in a snap was felt individually. Mephisto could feel it all inside of him and knew his strength was flowing out more freely than his blood. These were injuries as only the son of a devil could inflict – physical, territorial, spiritual.

His form was coming apart at the seams. All Mephisto could muster by the end was a whimper – a helpless little cry from the demon that fancied himself a devil as his presence was torn limb by limb, then into shreds, then to just another stain on his assailant’s body. A flash of power erupted from the Gargoyle’s body, and with a wail of exile, even the stain was gone. The Gargoyle blinked his mismatched eyes, licked his lips, and reveled in the aftertaste of a fresh kill.

“Say what you will. The fact of the matter remains that Blackheart is still dead and we’re still here. Like father like son.”

Daredevil's scream punched a hole through the Black Widow's post-battle afterglow. She whirled, saw the man clawing at his face as a red-white foam exploded from his mouth, saw him topple over onto his back in a cloud of fine black dust.

"Matthew!" she cried, not caring about his secret identity anymore, not caring about anything but helping him. Dear God, he'd been fine just a moment earlier, silent as always in the wake of a battle sorely won. And now... now...

He was still clawing at his face, even though Natasha got the impression he wasn't exactly conscious anymore. She grabbed his hands, tried to restrain him, but he was far too strong in his panic. He was screaming someone's name.

"Mmmmaaaggggiiiieee!!!!"

"Help me!" Natasha screamed. "Somebody help me!"

A pair of two-toed feet landed in the dust at Daredevil's other side, a curved pirate’s sword falling to the ground alongside them. And then Nightcrawler was there, kneeling next to the man and helping the Widow fight his clawing hands.

"What is it?" he demanded. "What happened to him?"

"I don't know! He just--"

Matt's head lunged forward suddenly, and fired a glob of spit at Nightcrawler's face. The mutant flinched back, but didn't let go of the man's hands.

"He is mine, Wagner! Mine! Just as you will be, you disgusting, pretentious, freak! Like a swine in a tuxedo, that's what you look like in that priest's collar! Who do you think you are?"

The voice wasn't Daredevil's at all, though it was inarguably coming from his mouth. He dropped his head back to the ground, and arched his back until he was bent almost double, feet scrabbling for purchase in the dirt. Again, he called out that name.

"Mmmmaaagggiiiieeee!!!"

"Mein Gott," Nightcrawler breathed, looking across at the Widow. "I think--I think he's being possessed."

Even with his face in the dirt and the scent of his own blood thick in the heavy air, Kyle Richmond could smell the vaguely unpleasant odor of overcooked fish coming off of the unconscious, dehydrated form of Namor, the mighty Sub-Mariner. Kyle's hands were free--though he couldn't remember who had cut the chains--and now his claws curled into the dirt, finding purchase and slowly dragging his uncooperative body toward his teammate. He had no idea what he might do when he reached the Sub-Mariner's side. Maybe nothing. Maybe he just didn't want to die alone.

He'd only crossed half the distance--part of him aware that the fighting around him had mostly stopped--when he felt the strong hands on his back, covering the stumps of his severed wings.

"Your time is not now, Kyle Richmond," the archangel said in a voice so resonant it would have shamed Isaac Hayes. "And, unlike your friend, your dual nature allows me some power in your recovery."

And then Nighthawk felt agony and ecstasy fill him all at once, etching outward from the wing stumps and throughout his body through the tangle-tree pathways of his vascular system, carried in his blood, feeding his flesh until the injuries and pains had been cauterized into warm scars of experience.

The pain drove him into unconsciousness long before his healer's work was done.

"Trying to possess him?" the Widow demanded. "A demonic possession? Like in The Exorcist?"

"Not exactly. Contrary to popular belief, a demon actually has to be invited in. It can't just go around taking over little girls and masked men at its whim. But, whatever happened here, for some reason the possessing entity is not strong enough to fully take control. Not without wearing Daredevil down first anyway."

"Well... you're a priest! Exorcise him!"

"Fraulein, I have been a priest for a very short time now. I've never performed an exorcism. I doubt I could even remember the proper prayers."

Natasha's eyes narrowed to slits and went cold as ice. "Try, damn you," she hissed. "Or go get Doctor Strange. Don't just sit there on your furry ass and tell me how hopeless it is!"

Nightcrawler flinched at the ferocity of her words. Then, quickly, he nodded. "Very well. Restrain him as best you can. I will need my hands for this."

Dane Whitman strode across the battlefield, stepping carefully over the bodies of the dead, wondering what would become of them, who would bury them. The Ebony Blade hung at his side.

He also wondered if the Defenders would hate him for what he'd had to do today.

"Dane."

He turned, and watched as Doctor Strange, restored to full power with the fall of the Black Veil, dropped to the ground beside him.

"Stephen. It's good to see you."

"And you," Strange replied, but he was looking at Dane quizzically, as if searching for some evidence to put the lie to what he was seeing. Finally, he just came out with it. "You stabbed Daimon--" Oboy. "Look, Steve, I had to--"

"Why didn't the Blade's curse affect you?"

Dane blinked. Then, he almost laughed. He'd nearly forgotten about the blasted curse...

"The curse on the Blade says that I must draw blood to activate it. According to Merlin, with all the power Daimon had incorporated, he didn't even really have blood anymore, only Hellpower flowing in his veins. To tell you the truth, I wasn't absolutely sure Merlin wasn't just shucking and jiving me until--"

"Murderer!"

A screeching, red-haired shrew in what looked like a flowing black wedding gown fell on the Black Knight seemingly from nowhere, hands and fingernails curled into well-honed claws. A look of such utter hatred marred her features that Doctor Strange didn't immediately recognize her. When he did, her transformation nearly broke his heart.

It was Patsy Walker.

Without missing a beat, the Knight stooped, dropped one shoulder, and used Patsy's momentum to flip her away from him. She somersaulted, the dress curling around her like spraying oil, and landed on her feet. Wheeling around, she made to begin the attack anew.

A mammoth green hand closed around her waist, lifting her off the ground and holding her there while she hissed and spat and struggled against it.

"That's enough, Patsy," the Hulk said from behind her, sounding uncharacteristically subdued.

"He killed my husband! He killed him!"

"Look again," Doctor Strange said, gesturing across the field, toward where Daimon had fallen.

A tall, broad-shouldered man with flowing red hair was rising to his feet. At first, Patsy didn't recognize him. Something was missing from his bearing, some indefinable sign of regality, and the large black pentagram that had formerly glowed darkly against his torso was gone, replaced with a jagged pink scar.

Patsy deflated, her face falling and tears welling up in her green eyes. Tremblingly, she said her husband's name.

"Release her, Bruce, if you please."

The Hulk set Patsy down without argument. As soon as she was free, she stumbled forward, fell to one knee, then got up and staggered across the field toward her husband.

The Black Knight was looking at Strange, confused. "I don't understand. Is this some kind of illusion? Isn’t that even more cruel than..."

Strange shook his head. "No, no illusion, old friend. I sensed it as soon as you struck Daimon down. You truly did not draw his blood, did not kill him. It protected you from the blood curse, but also spared Daimon his life."

"Then this isn't--"

"It is over. Daimon may live, but he has been reduced to a state that, for him, resembles death. His link to his father's power has been broken. Now and forevermore, he is the worst thing he could possibly imagine: a mortal." Strange watched as Patsy reached her husband's side, watched as they flung their arms around each other, sinking to their knees together among the muck and blood.

"For the moment, at least, that is punishment enough for the both of them."

"I exorcise you, o impious Satan!"

Seconds earlier, Kurt Wagner had spit into his own hand, over and over again, until his mouth was as barren as the ground they knelt on and his voice a dry rasp. And then he did something with that handful of saliva the Black Widow never would have believed.

He blessed it.

There was no water in this place, as Namor would have attested if Namor were conscious to do so. But in order to perform the exorcism rite as Kurt had learned it, the victim had to be exposed to holy water. Under the circumstances, this was as close as Daredevil was getting.

"In vain do you boast of this deed! I command you to restore it as proof before the whole world that, when God receives a sinner, you have no longer any rule over his soul!"

Natasha was practically sitting on Matt's chest now, while Nightcrawler held the holy sputum to the man's forehead. Matt was hissing and growling and struggling beneath them.

"Return therefore this deed whereby this creature of God foolishly bound himself to your service; return it, I say, in His name by whom you are overcome!"

"MMMMMAAAAGGGIIIEEEEE!!!!!"

"He's fighting it!" Natasha cried, managing a grin as she fought to keep Matt pinned down.

"When your power has come to nothing, presume not longer to retain this useless document!"

Daredevil jerked, snapping with his teeth at the three-fingered hand on his forehead, but Nightcrawler grabbed him by the jaw with his opposite hand and forced him to be still.

"By penitence already has this creature of God restored himself to his true Lord--"

Daredevil's thrashings were becoming less pronounced. The Widow was actually having some success in holding him down now.

"--spurning your yoke--"

"mother," Matt Murdock groaned.

"--trusting in the Divine mercy for defense against your assaults!"

Daredevil was still. Over him, Nightcrawler and the Black Widow gasped for breath, sharing an uncertain look between them.

"Did it work?"

"I--I think so." Nightcrawler removed his hand from Daredevil's forehead. His palm-print was burned across the mask.

"I take it he's Catholic."

Natasha laughed, despite herself. "Oh, very much so. Wouldn't it have worked on an atheist?" Then, sobering, she added, "What do you think got hold of him like that?"

"I have no idea," Nightcrawler replied, turning his gaze out over the battlefield. "But whatever it was, and wherever it is now, I'd be willing to wager it's very, very upset."

In a dark, unknowable place, where nightmares and forgotten devils go to die, the loose collection of dark magic and evolutionary fear that had once been called Mephisto watched as Matt Murdock was wrested from his grip, his soul returned to its vessel. Leaving Mephisto alone here, alone in the dark.

He wanted to cry out his fury, but he had no voice. He wanted to clench his fists and stamp his feet, but he had neither.

None of it mattered, though. He would heal. With the fears and petty hatreds of man as his food, he would return in no time at all. And eventually, sometime down the road--perhaps not until the day Daredevil died but probably long before then--he and Matt Murdock would meet again.

And on that day, he would learn the price of reneging on a deal with the devil.

No one noticed her wake up and stumble off in the middle of all the bravado, breakthroughs, and angles giving stern goodbyes. The heroes were too busy acting like it was a victory. Well, it wasn’t – not to Regina Garney. She’d followed them to Hell to find her son. Now he was lost to her. Only her need for revenge approached being great enough to fill the hole her son’s absence left.

“I knew it,” she said, her face a contortion of barely-contained rage. “I knew you couldn’t really be gone. I knew it.” Her fists balled and she suddenly towered stories above the naked thing she’d found laying quietly on a boulder. Eyes and hair literally ablaze, she grit her teeth and bathed her finding in angry firelight.

He sat up and shook his head, running his hand through his long, curly blonde hair. He looked like he’d woken from a short, unsatisfying nap, leaving him weak and groggy. That appeared more important to him than the fire-giantess before him. “Woman, I am not who you think.”

She lifted him from the rock like a doll and squeezed tight. “Don’t try to lie to me! After all this time, don’t play even one more game with me. You raped me! You raped my life! You’re the devil and you gave me a son and ripped him away.”

The naked little man didn’t squirm. It didn’t hurt. His membrane-lined wings popped out between her fingers and he just watched her, listening.

“Every night...every night after you did it I’d dream horrible things. And when I did, I’d wake up like this. Did you give me this power to punish you? Because that’s all I have left, dammit,” she squeezed harder, “that’s all!”

“Mother.”

She knew the voice and didn’t want to turn to see – but she had to. Flapping his wings at Regina’s shoulder was a little orange-and-purple gnat, something that used to be her son, used to be a man, and now was a twisted little monster.

“Mark...” she breathed, totally forgetting the tiny weight in her fist.

The Gargoyle spoke loud and formally. ”Unhand him. We’ll only ask you once.”

“Dammit, I’m your mother, Mark!” The tears had been so many, so hard, that Regina found she was fresh out of them. Besides, this was barely her son anymore – now it was just a reminder of the past years of hell. Her trip to this place had started earlier than anyone else’s.

”Don’t make us hurt you, mother. Believe us, we can.”

What was the point? Regina saw none. She placed the naked man back onto his rock and, unconsciously, her stature returned to normal. The flames all but flickered out. “Who are you?”

“I am Lucifer.”

“You said you didn’t rape me...”

Lucifer regained his footing and held himself like only true royalty can hold, naked and beautiful like a dimmed sunset. “Not as you imagine it. I was only a third of your trouble, if that much.”

One figure appeared in the near distance, then another, both treading over the overgrown garden of rocks and spent soldiers. Their eyes never met. Both were winged.

“Father...?”

“Yes,” all three answered – the fallen angel Regina had held, the red-haired man with horns and sharp, dark features, and the black demon whose face was unbearable to look at for more than a few seconds at a time.

Someone said, behind Regina, “You were dead.” Over her shoulder were the Defenders – battered, grim, and exhausted – with both a glossed-over Hellstrom and Patsy in tow. It was the Black Knight who spoke. His sword was drawn. “I saw it.”

The man who resembled an older portrait of Daimon smiled crookedly. “Your eyes aren’t the only thing you can’t trust in Hell. The Soulsword,” he motioned to Illyana, who had shed her armor but still held the blade, “merely cleaved us.” “A delectable treat it made of Mephisto’s son.” The demon whose face was currently a bull’s licked a soil smudge from its cold lips. “Because of it we are now three. Devil—“

“—Satan—“ spoke the red-haired one.

“—and Lucifer.” The nude prince spoke it like a chore. He held his knees atop a higher rock now. He had no discernable genitalia.

“But – but what happened? All the beings Daimon brought here...?” Nightcrawler’s theological curiosity was piqued, helping to carry Daredevil’s dead weight along with the Black Widow.

“What does it matter?” Lucifer looked away, letting Satan take over.

“I’m sure some of them got away, reformed. Hela, Belasco – they’re sly, but they’re nothing. Let them go. The rest are divided among us.”

The demon added, “Sweet power. Sweeeeet power.”

“I suggest you leave,” said Lucifer. “Before we change our mind.”

Stephen Strange stepped forward. His inner leader was free to speak with the Black Veil gone. “Change your mind about what?” He held the Devil-Slayer from stepping forward without looking.

“Letting you go,” Satan told him matter-of-factly. “It’s a one time offer.”

The demon rubbed its crotch with a sharp hoof, nearly drawing blood. “One time offer. I want to suck on your soul and call you brother. Be my valentine.”

“Father...?” The situation had brought the Gargoyle to silence before but this...this was an outrage. “You promised! My revenge, you promised it! We have the Sorcerer Supreme, the Prince of Atlantis...so many souls!”

“Oh, quiet,” said Lucifer.

Satan had already begun drawing a door in the air with his hooked little fingernail. “Really. You’re beginning to sound like another son I used to have.”

The Gargoyle grimaced. His father could be cruel. Regina gazed upon him silently with a hint of distant pity and loss. This was the life he’d earned: prince to a triumvirate in the realm of the damned for all time. Patsy looked at Daimon and found nothing in his eyes but a wish to leave. She shared her husband’s sentiments.

“I like souls,” the demon smiled. The Hulk felt bile in his throat at the sight and almost used both Namor and Nighthawk’s unconscious bodies to beat it even further away.

“You’re letting us go?” the Black Widow asked. “Just like that?”

The three devils looked upon them from varying heights of stone.

“Please, just go. We have a Hell to run.”

“Go home and lick your wounds. You don’t pose any threat to us now or ever. And next time you won’t get off so easy – if you’re foolish enough to return. But I suppose our destinies intertwine.”

“Let’s intertwine. I just can’t get you out of my mind. Play with me.”

A door large enough for one at a time was etched in Hell. Stephen cast a wary look upon it as the amulet on his chest opened to an eye.

“Is it safe?” asked the Devil-Slayer.

“Yes,” was the doctor’s diagnosis. “As safe as it was coming here.”

Doctor Strange was the first to use the door, which for him opened directly to his sanctuary. Daredevil and the Black Widow walked into Matt Murdock’s New York brownstone. Nightcrawler immediately went to the bed in his crisp Vatican quarters and prayed. Regina Garney stepped out in front of the crumbled heap that was once the house she and her son played, learned, and lived in. She wept. Some followed each other; some went places where they knew they’d be completely alone. Whoever left last shut and locked the door behind them.

It wasn’t much of victory, but they’d have to take it.

Yeah, an afterward. Four thousand word fanfiction issues have author’s notes or letters sections. Eight thousand, nine hundred and fifty-eight word chunks of narrative get an afterward. Man, that’s almost a seventh of an average-length novel! But if you’ve followed DEFENDERS this far you’re used to the wordage – and hopefully you can put up with a little bit more.

Russ thought it’d be a good idea to give a little background on my goals for ‘The Black Veil’, so how bout some’a that, huh?

The Defenders, especially under the pen of J. M. Demattis in the early 1980’s, have always had a certain link to Hell. It started with Daimon Hellstrom (Hellstorm, Son of Satan) and carried on to his father, as well as any number of Marvel analogues of the devil – Mephisto, Asmodeus, Satannish, Thog, and more. All have appeared as lords of some sort of underworld or something close to the archetypal Prince of Lies and for a long time there was little continuity between them. Marvel’s Hell was pretty darn complicated. With this arc, I wanted to simplify it. My solution was to slim down the number of devils walking around (yes, you can wave a permanent goodbye to Thog and the others killed by Daimon) to three – a being closer to the beautiful Morningstar with his eyes still watching the heaven he fell from (Lucifer), a devious, more traditional but still modern Satan, and the demonic soul-eating embodiment of unbridled sin, the Devil. With Blackheart dead and Daimon stripped of his title, the Gargoyle fits the role of the infernal son...

Whew. Yeah, so I wanted to make Hell a little simpler, a little more clear-cut. That’s my solution. Or I should say, our solution. To go back further...

I started this series out three summers ago. If you want to go read the four issues, do so for comedy’s sake, or at least to see (hopefully) how far we’ve come since. I think things improved with each issue after #4 and those steps turned into leaps once Russ Anderson came on as the man who sculpts my chunky ideas into fine shapes and has written the better parts of the past four issues both in quantity and quality. We may have taken a while to get things out, but Russ was always patient, always professional, and always on top of things. Most of all, he made me strive to do my best with every scene of his I received.

Russ is a modest guy, as most of the good ones are, and he’s probably been thinking, or even saying aloud, “Will, stop. Stop stop stop. Wrap it up.” Take a bow before I end it, Russ. We’ve garnered two Editor’s Choices together and left our mark. I can’t thank you enough for ‘helping me out with the series’ (as he so put it when he offered it to me a year and handful of months ago).

DEFENDERS was my first series for Marvel 2000, amassing a whopping (ha!) thirteen issues in about two and a half years. There are parts I’m immensely proud of and others I cringe at. Over all, I’m proud. Those thirteen issues can serve as a record of my growth as a writer and, being one of my few truly complete runs, is close to my heart.

Thank you, all who’ve written us with words encouraging and critical. Thanks especially to those of you who’ve stuck around all the way to the very, very end. I can only hope that one of you who truly has enjoyed the series thus far might pick it up. If not, someday, if and when Russ isn’t doing a million things at once (and doing them well...and on time), if and when I can keep a schedule, there’s one more story we wanted to tell. It begins in Egypt with a floating jewel...

But that’s an if and a when. As it is, I’m happy with what we’ve got.

Will Short
(wondering if he should write an afterward for the afterward...)
5:14 PM / February 27, 2003