The Life and Times of Derek Verona Pt. II

The Dream

Derek Verona had defeated his longtime nemesis, David Shand. But his victory had come at a terrible cost. The injuries sustained during the battle with David Shand were grievous indeed, and Derek Verona had expended the very last of his power against David Shand. Having suffered severe trauma to his head, he slipped into a coma, even as the paramedics on the scene rushed him to a nearby hospital. He would remain unconscious for several months.

As medical personnel fought to save his life, Derek felt his spirit slip away from his body, being drawn away from this plane to another. A battle of the body had just all but ended his life. But now, a much greater battle, a battle of the spirit, was about to begin.

Little time had passed before Verona discovered that he could shift away from this plane, the central plane of the corporeal, and journey to realms thought only to exist in works of fiction and in philosophical treatises.

Some have said that we define the very nature of reality ourselves, so that the world is different to each set of eyes, each set of ears, each set of hands, each nose, each tongue, each mind. In this way, “the world” is not one single physical mass of rock and water, but is rather billions of possibilities coalesced into one amalgamated macrocosm. That within the central concept of “the world” there exists trillions of subcategories, each for one of the creatures which experiences it. Perhaps it was for this reason that Derek Verona was able to travel throughout the planes during the dark days of his comatose “Dream”. He had been raised a devoted Catholic, and he had not been administered the Last Rites by an ordained priest. Perhaps his spirit did not ascend into Heaven because the conditions had not yet been met. During the his dark journey through “The Dream”, Verona sought answers to the questions buried deep within his soul, questions he had hidden deep, for fear of what the answers may be. During his waking hours, he had often referred to the things he had suppressed as his demons, and one by one, these demons were rising to the surface to confront him.

His unspoken love for Teresa Kobayashi, which had, in a way, contributed to his current state, tormented him in the darkness. His hatred of David Shand, the “Soul Reaper”, burned with the fire of a thousand stars, and poisoned him more and more with each passing minute. His anger, his pain, his despair...all these things ignited the infernal fires within, and the greatest of all his demons, which had been locked away so deep within him that he had never known of its existence, threatened to release itself from its confinement, and consume his very soul. Ironically, that “demon” was no demon at all. But rather, a devil. The devil within him, the heritage all the people of his ancient House had shared. For the first time in his life, he could feel the blood of Dregath stir within him. And it called him, compelled him somehow. He wanted revenge against David Shand, nothing else seemed to matter. And the devil Sieleansu within him knew how revenge might be attained.

Derek Verona went to Hell. And Dregath's legacy returned home.

It was in Hell that the last of his humanity fell away, and his birthright was realized. Upon the dessicated plains of Avernus, the first realm, he met his beloved Teresa one last time. He hadn't the time to consider the plausibility of this encounter, because at that moment, he found himself face to face with David Shand, larger, stronger, faster, and more terrible than ever before. Enraged, feeling the hatred boil up within him, Verona battled his old enemy with all his might, but never seemed to gain any advantage. Every time he struck Shand down, the giant man would rise again, unharmed. His worst fears had been realized. Shand could not be destroyed. Shand could not even be harmed!

Verona fought his way through layer after successive layer, outwitting the pit-fiend Bel, Lord of Avernus, and other members of the infernal nobility to ensure his passing through the realms. In the great iron city of Dis, he dared to infiltrate the iron citadel of the archdevil, Lord Dispater. Dispater would have torn Verona's soul to pieces, but for the rising power of the pit-fiend within him. He overcame the strength of Dispater, and passed into the third Realm, Minauros.

In the putrid, ever-decaying swamps of Minauros, Verona encountered a far more dangerous enemy. The archdevil Mammon, who took the form of a great serpent, was craftier than had been Bel and Dispater. Furthermore, Verona could not hope to match the power of Lord Mammon, and so he resorted to a tactic so cheap it would make even the Lord of Minauros proud. He stole Mammon's prized steed, a Nightmare, and held it for ransom. Outwitted by Verona and forced to actually keep a promise, Mammon granted Verona safe passage into the fourth realm, Phlegethos, domain of the Hag Countess Malagar.

It was in fire-blasted Phlegethos that Derek Verona began to understand the nature of his power. Laying deep within a pool of fire, unharmed, was the unconscious form of his beloved sister, Cassandra. Forced to ponder how this could be possible, there had come to him a great revelation that all physical laws had been suspended, rendered meaningless. It was as if some unknown force had willed all that surrounded him to exist, and that the only law was the whim of this unknown entity. For the first time, Verona remembered that it was only his spirit which had journeyed to this place. And that he, himself, had been the force which gave definition to this infernal place. It was his will. His body still lay on a hospital bed, attached to machines which sustained his life. All that had happened thus far had happened because, in his mind, he had decided that such things should happen. And if he had indeed created this Hell, then why shouldn't he possess the power to alter it at will?

All his life, Derek Verona had battled against his demons, and throughout all the bitter years, he had given ground to his fears, his anxieties, his regrets. “The Dream” had been the punishment he had inflicted upon himself for what he had perceived to be his failures. His failure to capture the affection of the woman he loved. His failure to destroy the man he had hated the most, his failure to keep the evil within him locked securely away. His spirit had found its way to Hell because that was truly where Derek Verona felt that he belonged. And once he had come to understand this, the constraints upon his inner devil fell away, and Derek Verona knew that he had finally returned home.

His diabolical power made manifest, he gathered his will to alter the very fabric of his Hell, and for a long moment, his comatose body in its hospital bed grew cold, and his heart ceased to beat. Both of his sisters sat by his side, holding his hands and weeping as their brother slipped away into the afterlife. For several moments, the body of Derek Verona had indeed been a lifeless corpse.

Quite suddenly, Verona was surrounded by absolute darkness.

The Ascension

Then, as his family wept for him, there issued forth from Verona's throat a roar of anguished defiance, even as his spirit pierced through the great barrier of death itself. His ancestor had been a pit-fiend, one of the officers of the most powerful of devils. But the progeny had grown more powerful than the progenitor. Added to Verona's already terrible power was the strength and will of a thousand ancestral generations. His ethereal form shrouded in a burning aura of blue fire, his rising power terrible and irresistible, Verona willed the infernal planes to shift once more, and bring Hell's overlord before him.

A great cry went up from the Pit of Nessus, and Asmodeus, the Lord of Lies, the great serpent Lord of Devils, Prince of Darkness, He once known as “The Morning Star”, was awakened from His deep slumber, and brought forth to face the justice of His deadly new enemy.

So began a battle which rent the very fabric of the universe, Asmodeus and the Ascendant locked in a duel of the spirit. For the first time, Asmodeus came to know fear. For here was a being He could not conquer, a creature beyond His control. The Ascendant Verona smote the great serpent, and within the form of the Serpent, Verona could see another, for the Lord of Lies was, Himself a lie, a deceptive armor worn by the true being within.

Deiamarah Ahrimaiel, the Deceptress, Goddess of the Sieleansu, the Mistress of the Nine Hells, stood before him. Eons before, she had banished his diabolical ancestor from the Nine Hells, and condemned Dregath to a life of brutal exile among the mortal races of the earth. Now, as the Ascendant Verona stood before the Deceptress, the hatred of his ancestor welled up within him, and he smote Ahrimaiel, and she was consumed in flame azure.

As Ahrimaiel perished before him, Verona knew that this victory, while very necessary, was yet only a victory in spirit, and that his victory would never truly be complete until he had accomplished his design in the flesh, as well. The avatar of the dread Deceptress had been vanquished, but the battle was far from over.

And so it was that Derek Verona, of the House of Verona, descended from the greatest of fiends, Dregath of Gei'henn, his spirit forged in the fires of his own Hell, had truly come into his birthright. His spirit shifted once more across the planes, once again entering his body. As his family wept tears of joy, Derek Verona opened his eyes, and stood upon his own two feet once again.

As his family watched in amazement, Derek reached forth his arms, and his eyes began to burn with azure fire. His body was enveloped in light of the same color, and his hair, which had for all his days been long and brown, turned as white as newly fallen snow. Of all present, only his sister Cassandra dared to step forward and lay a tender hand upon his cheek. One fiery blue tear issued forth from his eye as he leaned forward to kiss his beloved sister on the forehead. He could never again be a human being, never again would he know the happiness of life as others knew it. He had surrendered himself entirely to his destiny, and the future made itself known to him.

“Dear Sister” he said quietly. “There is much that I wish to tell you. But the time has not yet come for you to know the truth. But one day, you will walk by my side again.”

And he spread his arms wide, screaming in agony, as his body completed the metamorphosis his spirit had begun within “The Dream”. For one brief moment, the skies of this world were set aflame, and then, the Heavens themselves began to weep, and the entire world was pelted with rain from the sky. Derek Verona, the first of the Ascendants, went forth from that place to fulfill his great destiny, and those that he loved would look upon him no more.