Chapter 19: Virgil - Where Light Cannot Follow

I tuck my hands behind my back as I turn and start walking toward the path. After all, if he is actively searching for me, then I must return Dante to his journey and put distance between us. I don't want Dante to brush against any part of my reality. Especially demons—or those who created them.

My shoes bear dark marks on the ivory canvas now. I consider shifting them clean, then don't. Ironically, Dante has mentally changed his own clothing to include a pair of elegant leather sneakers as well, but his remain spotless despite walking over the same boggy ground.

His spirit lifts right as mine begins to sink.

"We have discussed the Aeneid," I say, so quietly I wonder if he can hear me over the shrieking souls drowning in the bog.

But he doesn't hesitate. "Yes." He walks alongside me, and there's something almost protective in the gesture. A shiver slips down my spine, remembering how he'd stood before me against Constance, a shield I neither asked for nor deserved. This isn't how I'd have him discover I'm a demon. Truly, I wouldn't have had him find out at all. Most souls never do.

"When I was a mortal man," I say carefully, "so hungry for my words to matter and mean something, an old god came to me one night."

Dante blinks at this revelation, his brow furrowing. He is—I allow myself to notice, just for a moment, before I bury the thought—truly a beautiful man, even in his own memory of himself. His bone structure is broad in a way that feels substantial, commanding. His lips are full and smooth, his hair dark as a raven's wing, making his eyes seem all the brighter for the contrast. But I shouldn't dwell on such things. Not now. Not ever, really.

"So gods are real?" he asks.

"Were real, at one point." I nod toward a turn in the path. I'm trying not to rush. For one thing, selfishly, perhaps, I don't wish to part from him. But I'm eager to get him out of these swamps and away from any entanglement with others of my ilk, those who have teeth and do bite. That urgency presses against my reluctance, and my feet move faster than my heart would choose.

"The world is full of stories of gods and magic and ancient monsters. They all hold some kernel of truth, some seed from which the tale first sprouted. But a trickster god managed to destroy the others. Or rather, he destroyed the tree that grew immortal fruit. He'd found a way to survive without it on his own."

"The gods are dead, then?"

"Most of them, yes."

Dante frowns at this but nods. He understands a world where one being would destroy others for his own gain. That is the air he has always breathed, the waters he has always known.

A creature made of bones and bits of rotting flesh waddles into our path. Dante regards it for a moment, a pause so brief I might have imagined it, before continuing to walk. He's already adapted to this wretched place. To hell. Most souls take far longer to stop flinching at every horror. But then, Dante has spent a lifetime training himself not to flinch.

I continue, "But the singular god who would not die harmed one aspect of his plan. You see, he gloated before the other gods, letting them know it was he who had tricked them, who had killed them. He forgot they still possessed their powers until their final breath. The most powerful of those ancient, dying gods cursed him so that he and the rest of the world would forget his name."

Dante scoffs. "What is a name? That seems a mild punishment, considering."

"Ah." I smile, but it's as bitter as wormwood. "But a name means more than you know. You remember I said names have power? They are how gods gain their magic—by millions of humans knowing and speaking and praying and revering their names. Carving them into statues, penning them into sacred texts, whispering them in moments of desperation or gratitude. The power of a name is exponential. It compounds like interest.” I glance at him. “If you'll forgive the metaphor."

The chittering and screams of the bog cease abruptly. I still, hunching into myself. There are only a few things that silence everything like that. I must get Dante back onto his path before it—they, or him—catches up with us.

I speak more quickly to match my hastened pace, though I mislike rushing a tale. "So that old god was bereft of a name. But he was clever. He discovered a name mortals love to invoke, a dozen variations of it. Some creature that was master over a place the wicked go when they die."

"Satan," Dante says in that authoritative voice of his, so that it rings out rich and resonant across the swamp.

I cringe but nod. When I speak, it's barely a whisper, but this is a story I want him to know, a warning I want him to carry. "Yes. Or Lucifer. Or Old Nick. Or the Devil, the Dark One, Beelzebub. Or any of the other dozens of names he's worn through the centuries. That was never a real being, you understand. It was just a haunted feeling mortals possessed, a shape they gave to their fears. But he slipped into that name, wore its magic around his shoulders, and formed this place out of the haunted psychology of the dead who cannot yet pass on."

"Hell," Dante whispers, matching my tone. "It's something that the one we're speaking of created."

"Yes. This place—all of it—feeds him. He is diminished now, a shadow of what he was in his full glory." I pause, watching the darkness gather between the trees. "But shadows can still smother. He's hoarded magic, powerful names, and allies."

Dante moves closer to me, unbothered by the fact that I can't interact with him physically. As though if he can't press his shoulder into mine for comfort, he'll offer the gesture anyway—spirit to spirit, intention to intention.

"Demons," he offers softly.

Something shrieks beyond us, some sound I can't even identify, and I nod. "Yes. He roams the mortal world at times, makes deals with mortals brimming with desires tied to their loops. Promises them what they want. Keeps his promises, too, that's the cruelest part. He never lies. He simply... omits."

"Do you mind me asking what it was that you wanted?"

I stop walking and turn to face him. I smile, even though it's rooted in pain. Because this man sees more than most I've encountered here. Because, most astonishingly, he bothers to look at all.

"As I mentioned earlier, I wanted my words to live forever, Dante."

His chin lifts, understanding dawning in his eyes like the first pale light before sunrise. "The being who rules this place—he created the opportunity for you to write the Aeneid."

"Yes." Tears fill my eyes. I've always wondered why I can weep when I can't do so many other things, but I suspect it's because the one called Satan enjoys witnessing my pain. Perhaps I should be grateful I have sight at all. After all, all he promised me was words. He was generous enough to let me keep my eyes to read them.

"I was sick. Dying. And I felt I hadn't written the text yet that might secure my legacy. It mattered so much to me then, though now, across the vast distance of centuries, I can scarcely remember why." I pause, gathering the threads of the story. "Before I finished the Aeneid, I regretted it. Considered destroying it. I knew I was already damned, but I didn't wish to enable an emperor bent on conquest, creating myths that were untrue to support a certain ideology. You see, stories aren't merely fictional, Dante. If enough people believe them, they become true. They shape the world as surely as any army. The old god, the one we're speaking of…” He nods his understanding. “He wanted to use the Aeneid for his purposes. And when he discovered I planned to feed my life's work to the flames⁠—"

"He killed you?" Dante gasps.

I shake my head. "He stopped preventing my death. You remember I was already dying when he came to me." I chuckle, this time rueful. "Ironically, perhaps, that is also how I met Musa. He came to me as a physician because I was dying as well. We had so little time together, and I squandered much of it at my desk."

"So you're a demon because⁠—"

"I sold my soul." I let the words sit for a moment, let them gain weight and gravity in the sulfurous air. Let him understand the full shape of what I am. "And he kept his promise. My words echo back across two thousand years."

Dante studies me, his gaze moving across my face searching for something—the monster, perhaps, or the man. I don't know which he finds.

"He is looking for me." I bow my head, feel the shame rise within me. The shame of my origin. The shame of how this has unfolded. The shame of my failure with Constance.

She'd been a bright, frightened woman when I first met her. Prone to her fantasies and self-justifications, yes, but when I witnessed her genesis stories, I understood how she became that person. I saw the hands that had shaped her, the voices that had twisted her. Her loops wrapped around her like chains she'd been forced to forge herself. I was so convinced I could help her. So certain that my guidance would be enough. A sign, I see now, that my own pride had not diminished nearly as much as I believed.

Now she haunts the swamps, as vicious as any of the demons. And her pain, and the pain she causes others, reverberates into me. Every soul she frightens, every lost wanderer she misleads, every time she freely helps him gain his purposes, I feel it. Because I failed her. Because I told myself I could save her, and I couldn't, and I left anyway.

"That's why I must leave you now," I say.

Dante's head snaps up. "No." Then, before I can interject, he moves closer, shaking his head. "Virgil, no. You said as long as I wanted you by my side, you'd stay with me. You're a man of your word."

His rebuke stings, for he's right. And also because I don't wish to abandon him. That is the deepest truth, the one I've been circling since we met.

"Dante," I say, his name a spill of silk in this blighted world, "you don't know hell yet. Most of what you've walked through are the original loops and genesis rooms—the structure that existed before he added on to this place. If he discovers you with me, he'll torment you solely to torment me. You see, I'm one of the demons he has very little power over."

"Because you push back. Because you don't feed on people, as that woman said."

"No. Because of my name." I kick a stone, watch it tumble into the darkness that is deepening around us, shadows falling in sheets. "He made a mistake with his promise to me. By making my words last forever, so does my name. And that gives me—a modest, irritating—amount of power. He's not one who enjoys competition. Certainly not when he perceives me as posturing myself as a savior of sorts, leading his prey away from his table."

Dante crosses his arms. His sweater is impossibly soft-looking, nothing like the armor of his first conjured outfit. He's changed, I realize. Not just his clothing, but the way he holds himself. Less rigid. More present.

"Well, I'll inform him you're a terrible savior. You don't intervene at all, and you only speak in riddles."

I chuckle, and there's a moment of lightness between us—brief, precious, entirely undeserved. But it only further contrasts how the world is deepening into navy and black all around us. A sure sign that demons have arrived—and perhaps their master.

"You must go." I try to speak firmly, but the words come out unsteady, frayed at the edges. "You've faced some of the worst parts of your journey, the hardest temptations. I believe you can manage the rest. Use my name as an anchor point if needed. It does have power here."

He started shaking his head halfway through my speech and is now doing so vigorously. "No," he says, and it's like the crack of thunder against the sky. "I'm holding you to your word, Virgil. You promised to stay with me as long as I wanted you at my side. And I still want that."

I close my eyes, squeeze them against the encroaching dark. "Dante, I bring you trouble now, not aid. You should go. Ascension is worth it. It's⁠—"

"Come with me. Come to ascension alongside me."

I open my eyes. He's being sincere. There's no guile on his face, no sardonic tilt to his lips. Instead, his expression is open and hopeful, almost vulnerable. As though he's the one asking for something he fears he won't receive.

"I cannot," I reply. "I am a damned soul, but you⁠—"

"Maybe this is your loop." That startles me enough that I fall silent, and he fills the quiet. "Maybe this isn't real either. Perhaps you're stuck in an old belief, and you need to break it."

I stare at him, mouth agape.

I had never considered that. In two thousand years of guiding souls through their prisons, watching them shatter the bars of their own making, I had never once turned that lens upon myself. I had simply accepted…

But perhaps...

No. No, it's not true. It's merely what he longs to be true. What I, in my weakest moments, might long to be true as well. But longing doesn't make a thing so. I learned that lesson with Musa.

"You should go. The path is just there to the left. You could make it to ascension in perhaps a few days of mortal time if you leave now and⁠—"

"I'm staying with you."

There isn't a beat of hesitation in his voice. I'm surprised his clothes haven't shifted back to his crisp suits and polished oxfords, because he's fully in Mr. Michael Dante, Managing Partner, mode now. The man who closes deals. The man who doesn't accept no.

"If I join you on the path again, he will find us easily," I try to reason. Shadows have overtaken the world, and I'm stumbling over my words, searching for the ones that will drive him toward a sensible decision. "He knows I guide souls along it."

"Then we go another way. There's another route to ascension, isn't there?"

"It's treacherous." Please, Dante. Go. Don't break my heart by making me watch you face torment.

"Then we go that way. Or we can take the path. But wherever we go, it will be together."

I swallow, trying to think of any way to convince him not to take this course. But I can see the truth of it. I am throwing myself against a mountain, and Dante will not shift. He is as immovable as the man I first watched walking his empty loop through Manhattan, but now that stubbornness is aimed at saving me rather than destroying himself.

The shadows have grown so dark I wouldn't see Dante if I didn't know so firmly that he was there, if my mind didn't conjure him for me.

"Fine," I declare. "But we must go at once. He's coming."

Dante's shoulders drop with relief, and he turns back toward the way we walked.

"Excellent. And we go together to ascension. Perhaps I'm the one to help you break your loop."

"Perhaps," I whisper, knowing I'm lying to him.

The word tastes bitter, though I cannot taste. It feels like betrayal, though I tell myself it's mercy. He won't leave without believing I'll follow. So I let him believe. I nod along to his hope, and I hate myself for it, and I know I'll do it again and again until he's safe, until he's standing in the light and I'm watching him disappear into it, and he'll never know that I knew all along I couldn't follow.

It's the kindest lie I've ever told. It may also be the cruelest.

Dante looks at me as though he sees through my words. "Give me your hand," he commands.

"You can't touch me. I'm not⁠—"

"Your hand."

I sigh, but reach out toward him. He lifts his hand carefully and places it just above the image of mine, then curls his fingers slowly until—it appears—he's gripped my hand within his. He's not touching me. Not really. It's impossible.

But it's the closest thing I've had to touch in two thousand years.

My breath catches—unnecessary breath, phantom breath, but it catches nonetheless. I feel something I haven't felt since Musa held my hand the night before I left for the journey that would be my last, when he pressed his lips to my knuckles and pleaded with me to stay. I feel held.

It's an illusion. I know it's an illusion. But I let myself have it anyway, just for this moment.

"I don't care about the rules of this place, Virgil," Dante says, and he looks me straight in the eyes as he speaks. "The rules have changed. And we're leaving together."

I'm unable to do anything but nod.

And I think, as we turn to walk into the darkness, I would damn myself all over again, for this. And perhaps that's the most damning thing of all.