The instant the timer hit zero, Dante was elsewhere. Sensation returned in a burst and he was immediately overwhelmed. After that eternity in the void even a breeze was sandpaper across his skin.

There was an instant feeling of vertigo, then he impacted a sucking surface on his stomach. Dante gasped as he felt an immediate bracing cold and his mouth immediately filled with brackish water. The sweet taste of decay followed shortly after and he spit it out.

He rose to his hands and knees, still coughing. The next breath was fortunately free of obstruction and all he could do was to greedily gulp down air. He remained like that for a good while, simply trying to bring his shaking body under control.

During this time Dante came to a few simple realizations. He was quite naked, wet, and very cold. In fact, he realized that his spastic shaking had been replaced with shivers.

Where in the hell have I been sent?

Dante cracked open his eyes and observed his surroundings for the first time.

He was currently resting at the bottom of a shallow pit which had unnaturally smooth sides, the bottom of which was already filling with dirty water. It was as if a perfect spherical part of the world had been deleted, which very well might have been what happened he realized. Even in the short time since he had come here the sides of the pit had begun to slump inwards in a slow moving tide of mud.

Dante looked upwards and realized that it was night. The stars above looked much like the ones back home with the exception that the moon was … shattered. A fact that was nearly immediately pushed to the back of his mind considering what else lay in that sky.

Nearly half of it was taken up by a … web of sorts, made up of many many blue strands that stretched from horizon to stratosphere. Many of the threads formed smaller geometric formations which were framed by characters that were perfectly readable even from this distance. Furthermore, the formations were constantly shifting and forming new arrays with no pattern that he could discern. Despite it all, no section seemed to interfere with its neighbors. As if there was an order to the chaos.

This had to be magic, at a scale that was almost dizzying to comprehend. Each of those strands had to be easily the size of a highway. In total, the construct had to be dozens of miles wide and extended far beyond the limits of his sight.

The other side of the sky was no less impressive.

Opposite the barrier, it seemed like the sky was bleeding fire. What appeared to be numerous small blazing stars trailing flames arced from somewhere unseen towards the barrier. As one of the stars neared the construct, there was an immediate reaction.

The shifting of the barrier grew even more frenzied and the patterns ever more intricate. Spectral threads began to extend out from the barrier and weave together. In a matter of seconds a second, much smaller, barrier appeared to intercept the projectile right before it struck the first.

There was an immediate bright flash and Dante was forced to look away, a large after image imprinted in his sight. He looked back just in time to catch the sparkling remains of the smaller barrier dissipating and a rolling sheet of flames spreading across the first. Though it bent at the point of impact, the barrier held.

This same scene played out at dozens of locations across the barrier in the next few seconds, all except for one.

The fireball struck as the sacrificial shield was still forming, scattering the arcane energies like wisps of fog, and impacted against the main barrier. There was a sound like a million windows shattering and Dante had to slap his hands over his ears. A section of the great barrier shattered and the fireball continued unopposed. Moments later, there was muffled ‘THWUMP’ and an enormous plume of flames lit the sky.

It wasn't until he saw the fire reach the clouds that Dante realized the true scale of that blast

“What the Hell?!”

Never, even in his wildest dreams, had he imagined that he would be transported to … what had to be a war zone! If one of those blasts landed anywhere near him, there might not even be ashes left.

Dante HAD to get out of there.

Dante swallowed nervously, and then forced his uncooperative limbs to stand. He slipped near immediately as the soft mud gave away and fell back onto hands and knees. Resigned, he scrambled at the side of the pit on all fours and dug deeply into the loam. It was a constant struggle against gravity and the softness of the mud didn’t offer solid handholds, but Dante eventually managed to get an arm over the lip of the pit and pull himself over.

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He immediately flopped onto his back and took deep breaths to calm his racing pulse. The mud seemed to accept him easily enough, but pulling anything from it took everything he had. Dante was sure that, if he wasn’t careful, that it might never let him go.

Now that he was out of the pit, Dante was able to get his first good look at his surroundings. The first word that came to mind was desolutation. There was no green here, only the same muddled browns and blacks. It was disorientating to the eye as the landscape seemed to follow no natural patterns. Just many craters of various sizes and the ruins of what appeared to be trenches. This stretched as far as his eye could see, which wasn’t that far, given the sheets of rain that continued to blanket everything.

Dante would not be surprised if he had been transported to hell.

Now what?

He had to go somewhere, this area wasn’t even slightly safe. Just, did he go to the barrier or where the spells were originating? Or perhaps he should take his chances and try to walk through this no man's land? From an immediate danger perspective, going away from the explosions seemed like the better idea, but he just had no idea if the spell throwers would be friendly towards him. Then again, he had no guarantee that …

Motion in the corner of his eye caught his attention and he looked up to see that a new barrage of spells had begun. Now that he was a little more calm Dante was able to spot that, while certainly the most visible, the fireballs were not the only spells being thrown. There was also what appeared to be a small mountain careening through the air as well as a spear of utter darkness that seemed to absorb all light.

Which is just wonderful.

One of these spells in particular, a glowing orb that crackled and snapped with large bolts of energy, caught his attention and Dante squinted at it. This one was lower than the others and time seemed to slow as he traced its path.

It was coming this way.

Dante staggered to his feet and began taking sucking step after sucking step towards the nearest trench. It was agonizingly slow and he was still a few steps away from the trenches edge when he felt every single one of his hairs stand on end. He threw himself into it with everything he had. Mid-air, he was caught by a wave of scorching air which pushed him farther than he expected and straight into the back wall of the trench.

He impacted on his side and all breath whooshed out of him as he fell to the bottom. Before he could begin to recover, a wave of glowing light round the corner of the trench to his left and rushed towards him. It looked as if the neon from a sign had leaked out and lightning arced from the glowing tide. All Dante could do before the wave reached him was cover his face and close his eyes.

He screamed as his left arm lit up with pain. It was as if a molten rod had been inserted into his arm and Dante convulsed, bending backwards as lightning flowed through his veins. He would have screamed had his jaws not been locked together. The heat was almost a secondary concern, though he swore he could feel his flesh crack.

Then it was over and Dante collapsed back to the ground. He opened his eyes and gave himself a once over, fearful at what he might find.

His skin was a bright angry red, as if he had suffered the worst sunburn of his life. On his forearm was a large black patch from which blood began to drip. Emanating out from this mark was a strange fractal network of bright red scars that climbed towards his chest, still steaming. He tried to flex the arm and, aside from a jerky shudder, failed.

Dante ran a trembling hand over it and felt the carbonized hairs there flake to dust. A quick brush through his hair revealed a bald scalp. He felt like a plucked and roasted chicken, a thought that drew a gasping laugh out of him. His cackles echoed down the trench, utterly incongruous with the constant background of explosions.

He couldn’t help himself, this was complete and utter bullshit. He should have died there — he was surprised he hadn't. Why had he been rescued from death and imbued with power only to be thrown into a meat grinder? Was whatever had rescued him observing like some kid with a magnifying glass, observing him as he tried to avoid the beam?

Whatever the reason, it was clear to him now that he was utterly on his own in a brutal that was currently doing its best to kill him.

A not so distant explosion drowned out his humorless laughter and provided a stark reminder of his circumstances. Dante couldn’t stay in this trench forever, no matter how much he wanted to. He staggered to his feet with his wounded arm hanging by his side and took a deep breath.

First, he should take stock of himself to see if he had more injuries. Dante began examining his body, looking for any obvious bruising and feeling for any pain. Almost immediately he stopped and raised his right hand with its 5 fingers before his disbelieving eyes. Trembling, he curled them into a fist and reveled in the sensations of his renewed ring and little fingers. It had been a fair few years since he had lost them doing that slaughterhouse job and Dante had almost forgotten what that felt like, though the phantom pain had done its best to remind him. At least the compensation money had been good.

A theory occurred to him and he sat down to look at the bottom of his foot. Yep, that scar from when he had accidentally stepped on broken glass was gone. The slight crook in his arm from when he had broken it was also gone. Dante checked every old injury that he could remember and found that they had healed without exception.

There was no other conclusion, he had come to this world completely healed.

It was hard to describe what he was feeling right now, but at least some of it was gratitude. For the second chance and the miracle cure. On the other hand … He gazed at his burnt and limp left arm.

Complicated indeed.