Page 45 of Where Light Cannot Follow

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."