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My Prince,” a hollow voice intoned through the black. That voice...he recognized that voice.

“Galfalix?” Dante said as he cracked his eyes open to the blurry visage of a knight.

“It is.” Galfalix responded in that same hollow baritone, voice as hoary as the grave. “Finally you have returned. You have been gone a long time.”

Dante looked around at the frozen mountain peak surrounding the Celestial Chair. Things didn’t look all that different.

“I suppose I have been gone awhile.” Dante said with tiredness in his voice. “A couple of years feels like forever. I thought I’d never get back.”

“A couple of years?” Galfalix’s laugh was even more sinister than his voice. “My liege, its been centuries.”

Now it was Dante’s turn to laugh. “Galfalix, when did you grow a sense of humor? I bet Father must think I’m dead. He has probably already proclaimed my brother as successor to the throne.”

Galfalix stood up from his bent over position and raised his visor. Dante recoiled in horror, his mouth open in surprise and the words he was about to speak dying on his lips.

“I assure you, your father is a long time in the grave,” the rotten skull of Galfalix responded, an erie purple glow pulsing in his visor. “Just like my sense of humor,or any feeling but the empty void of duty that compels my wretched existence.”

“What...happened to you?” Dante said as he leaned closer, inspecting the gruesome visage of the Crystaline Guard with morbid curiosity.

Galfalix slammed his visor closed,and straightened, his rune warded armor gleaming in the darkness. “I was cursed to endure in decay until my service to you is fulfilled.”

“And when is that?” Dante rose from the chair, his white hair blowing in the chill evening breeze.

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“When you die.” Galfalix stated simply.

“Wait.” Dante said with a frown. “ So everyone I know is dead?”

“Dust with the exception of Ambivilon and your sister, Kyria, perhaps.”

“Gone. All of them?” Dante shook his head in horror as realization of the enormity of the situation hit him. He felt dizzy as he looked around at the snow capped peaks, and at the familiar sky. He began to breath heavy, his chest rising and falling as he sucked air in deep gulps that turned shallow as he began to hyperventilate. He fell to his knees and covered his head in anguish. “No. No!” He shouted, rending his hair and face with clawed fingers. Galfalix remained a silent sentinel, observing this display of mortal emotion with the care of a stone.

“All I’ve hoped for, struggled for, bled for...is..is dust!” Dante cried, arms open in supplication to the night. “Mother! Galaina! All I love is lost to me! I survived for you and am now left with ash and despair!”

Dante wept hot tears that seared wet streaks down his face. He began to groan, and then to growl and shake as his pain transformed into rage.

“I will have my revenge…” he whispered as he pounded his fist on the frozen ground. “I will take everything from you, just as you have from me.” The ground began to crack under the force of his blows as his eyes streamed scarlet light, and his fist began to glow bright with power. “Drakul!” He cried out with a voice like a thunder storm, smashing his power enhanced fist down once more with a boom that shook the mountain. The peak crumbled into a massive crater, and he rode the rockslide down until the rock and snow settled.

As Dante seethed in rage and pain, Galfalix exploded from the ground beside him in a shower of rock and ice. The Crystaline Guard landed heavily, and glanced about at the towering walls of rock that ringed the newly created basin.

“You realize,” Galfalix said in the voice of the grave, “That getting out of this hole could be difficult.”

Dante regarded Galfalix with sobriety, his emotions once more under control. “Not for me. Not anymore.”

There was a long silence where they shared a prolonged gaze. Galfalix shifted as if he had no clue what he should be doing, and then said. “Ah..What happened to you.”

“You really are bad at this whole mortality thing, aren’t you?” Dante observed with a pained expression.

“I thought perhaps showing a semblance of care was expected.” Galfalix responded. “Though I don’t. I have no motivating forces within me except my Geis.”

Dante sighed. “I understand. I am no longer human either. But thank the Ascended that I’m not...what you are.”

“I suspect you are cursed, same as me.” Galfalix stated hollowly. “In a different way. But cursed is cursed.”

“Maybe.” Dante said replied as he clenched his fist. “But I will use my curse to destroy Drakul.”

There was another prolonged silence.

“You don’t care.” Dante said evenly.

“No, I really don’t.” Galfalix stated, as close to an apology as the grave would ever give.