8. Virgil
VIRGIL
The click of Dante's watch hand advancing echoes through the swamp as we step back into the mire.
He doesn't notice as he sweeps his arm across his nose against the stench.
His expression scarcely changes. This man has mastered the art of schooling his features, hardening his heart into something impenetrable.
Now I understand why. Whatever hesitation I carried about helping him—the weary suspicion that he would choose his cage like so many before him—dissolved the moment I witnessed his first genesis scene.
All aspects of modern human life fascinate me.
I'm a soul centuries removed from living—from tasting food, feeling sea-spray carried on wind, the warm kiss of sunlight after endless winter.
The mortal world has transformed in ways both wondrous and bewildering.
Chariots gave way to carriages, then to motorcars that continue evolving with each passing decade.
Every soul that arrives carries fresh memories of these marvels, each iteration somehow more astounding than the last. And I witness it all secondhand, borrowed from others' minds, filtered through their remembrances.
It is the only window I have left to that world.
Dante walks ahead now, shoulders squared, spine rigid.
He doesn't look down at the muck his shoes squelch through.
When a creature from the deep disturbs the tea-black water, its scaled hide breaching before vanishing again, he doesn't even flinch.
Such discipline can conquer empires. It can also build prisons no one else can see.
Some things about humanity remain unchanged across millennia.
Human passions—jealousy, bitterness, desire, secrets carefully guarded.
Human genius—artistry, hope, hunger for beauty in even the bleakest circumstances.
And the capacity of some to neglect their children.
In my time, people abandoned infants to exposure, leaving them to die from winter's brutal cold. Others who were abandoned when older or collected by gangs or makeshift families ran half-wild through streets, begging at bath houses and marketplaces. Pickpockets. Street performers. Or worse.
They all wore the same brazen expression—the whooping thrill of surviving another day—possessed by the wild belief that life might prove kind, that tomorrow would bring mercy.
That expression serves only as armor, though.
The Dante in his genesis scene didn't wear it yet.
Instead, his form flickered between the man before me and the soft-faced child of his past, bearing an expression I recognized with painful clarity.
A boy named Felix wore that same look when he stumbled into my home, soaked through as a storm raged overhead.
I'd taken him in, offered shelter and education, a place at my table.
He received safety that Dante never knew, yet his wounds still carved deep scars.
He never descended to this wretched place.
A singular mercy among my sea of sorrows.
But Marcus, when he arrived here and became the first I guided free, told me of Felix's fate.
The boy had kept my tomb honored, managed my library, and worked diligently even after I was gone.
The expression Felix wore that first storm-swept night, the same one young Mikey Dante bore, was one of hope shattering. Wide eyes and pursed lips speaking of innocence departing a body far too soon.
My voice emerges barely more than a whisper over the swamp's ambience. "It is a fearsome thing, I understand, finding oneself alone and self-reliant as a young child."
Dante whirls, coat spinning around him like ruffled feathers.
"Do not speak as though you comprehend anything about it.
One glimpse at my life reveals nothing about me.
" His eyes blaze with such intensity that they gleam ruby-bright.
"I’m not a man who wallows in the past. What's behind us is finished.
Lingering over it produces no gain. That's what my mother did.
" He practically spits her title. "Dwelt on wrongs done to her until she drank herself to death. "
It's the most he's spoken at once, certainly with the rawest of emotion. Pointing out how deeply this still impassions him, proof that he hasn't moved past it, would serve no beneficial purpose.
The swamp shifts beside us. We've stopped where the path narrows to mostly mud that swallows our feet. His trousers and shoes are grime-stained. He hasn't yet realized that most of this is entirely perception—his and mine. It's why my shoes remain spotless.
Of course, he can feel his feet within the leather, stretch his toes until they press against the shoe's inner curve. This world feels real to him. I, conversely, feel nothing at all.
"You mistake understanding for pity," I finally say. "I only mean there's a difference between leaving the past behind and being pursued by it. One is a choice. The other is a chain."
His nostrils flare. I’ve said precisely the wrong thing, though I'm uncertain what might have been correct.
His posture straightens, and it's like watching a volcano retreat back into its mountain.
All heat and vapor reabsorbing, rocks sliding back into place, stony expressionless features returning to his handsome face.
"Do not speak of my life as though you know it. I am chained to nothing."
"There is no one in hell who isn't chained to something."
His chin lifts, weighing my merit. Then he gives a sharp nod. “Tell me then, what chains you?”
The question strikes an unexpected blow. I freeze mid-step, one foot suspended over murky water. In all my centuries guiding souls through this realm, perhaps a dozen have thought to ask. Even fewer have recognized that I, too, am trapped here.
"That," I say carefully, schooling my features back into gentle neutrality, "is not a productive line of inquiry for your journey."
"Convenient deflection." His dark eyes study me with the same intensity he likely brought to analyzing market reports. "You can excavate my childhood trauma, but your chains remain private?"
"My chains are not what will free you from this place."
"Perhaps not." He takes a step closer, and I resist the urge to retreat. "But it's interesting, isn't it? You speak of honesty and openness as though they're requirements for passage, yet you guard yourself as carefully as I do."
The observation lands with uncomfortable accuracy. I force a slight smile, an expression I've perfected over centuries, conveying warmth while revealing nothing. "The difference, Dante, is that I am not trying to escape."
"Everyone would want to escape hell."
"Not everyone can.” The words emerge quieter than intended. “Besides, some of us have reasons to remain."
His brow furrows slightly, genuine curiosity breaking through his usual armor. For a moment, I think he might press further, might be the fourth soul in all my existence here to truly see me rather than simply use me as a guide.
Then his expression shutters closed once more. "Fine. Keep your secrets, poet. But don't expect me to spill mine so readily if you're not willing to practice what you preach. I don't wish for you to explore my mind further. It's private. A man has a right to his privacy."
"Rights are the language of the living," I reply measuredly.
I'm learning that this man cannot be soothed by compassion. He’s learned to interpret it as weakness.
I spent my mortal years surrounded by senators; I know how to speak the dialect of false strength if that's what he respects.
"Down here, there are only choices: open or closed. "
His jaw tightens, but he doesn't respond immediately. Which constitutes something. He shatters my hope almost instantly.
“I choose closed. Stay out of my mind."
He turns and resumes walking, stirring such unexpected human emotion in me that I freeze momentarily. I've spent countless centuries accompanying the desperate, miserable, and downtrodden. I rarely allow them to offend me. Yet something about this man strikes like a poker stirring coals into flame.
"How am I to help you navigate this realm if I disconnect from your mind?"
I'm genuinely uncertain I can remove myself from him, at least not completely anymore. Once I enter a soul's mindscape, a bond forms between us. For a moment, I hear a woman's distant wails and shudder. It's a bond that never quite severs, despite my efforts.
He turns back with a smear of a smile, and I recognize this as the face much of the world must have witnessed. "Unable to walk on your own two feet, then?"
"Perfectly able," I reply as though bored, though my long-dormant heart begins simmering with feelings I'd nearly forgotten. If I walk this path disconnected from him, I'll traverse my own temptations, my own memories. I've mastered... most... of them. But it's not something I long to revisit.
"Well, then." Dante gestures forward toward the path. Ahead, a door stands wreathed in fog. We've already arrived. Somehow, he's forcing himself through these realms at a pace I've never witnessed.
I pull away from his mind. It’s nearly a viscous sensation, this disconnection.
He lingers still, presence hovering at the edges, but no longer shaping how I perceive the swamp.
Now it appears as I truly see it—less haunted, more melancholy.
Trees droop toward water, leafless and parched despite being surrounded by the very sustenance they crave.
Logs drift aimlessly, forever trapped in the moment after death.
I could turn back. Find another soul to guide.
Or perhaps venture deeper into the swamp.
I’ve carved exploratory paths when connection to humanity became unbearable.
So far, I've discovered no end to this place.
Or I could return to early loops where humans first arrive, observe their worlds from a safe distance, and catalog details of things I've never learned names for.
Dante's obsidian eyes haven't released their grip on me. And there's something about this man, this stubborn, arrogant, possibly heartless creature.
Something causes me to hesitate. I tell myself it isn't his beauty. I’m too far removed from fleshly pleasures for that.
And this feeling bears no resemblance to what I shared with Musa in those brief, luminous years before my death.
That was warmth and laughter and stolen moments between verses.
This is something else entirely, sharper, more desperate.
I let my gaze drop to the slime-slick stones at Dante's feet.
Mr. Dante's, perhaps I should say. So accustomed to authority, he believes it will serve him here.
Believing that if he maintains his arrogance and cutting glares, he'll march through each room, locate the exit, and simply walk out. That he needs no guide.
He doesn't know that the genesis is only the beginning.
Some creature not of the earthly plane—one I've never bothered naming—slithers over stone, belly writhing as it pulls itself into the ink-dark water. The swamp ripples, then settles.
I shift to return down the path. I cannot bear watching another soul fall. Cannot endure failing again.
Perhaps after all these years, something is finally breaking within me.
I knew from the beginning I shouldn't have entered this man's mindscape.
Shouldn't have allowed the bond to form.
Soon his terror will echo through my consciousness like a crescendo building toward catastrophe.
For another moment, I hear a woman's wails, high and desperate.
I shake my head sharply, forcing myself back to the present.
I cannot keep doing this to myself. I shift to leave, but Dante speaks, though he's not looking at me. His hand rests on the door's knob, attention fixed there. But he doesn't turn it.
"Are they all moments from my past?"
There's something nearly frightened beneath the echoing authority of his voice. Small and whispering.
"Not all," I answer. “They will possess a mixture of your genesis moments and your temptations."
He shudders. The coat follows the motion, trembling down his frame.
When he looks back, the arrogance has swept away for just a breath. It's not Mr. Dante, the wealthy executive, standing before me, but a child with dark eyes on the verge of tears, asking when his father might return, stomach growling with hunger.
"You'll be with me, though?" The question carries uncertainty he'd never permit in daylight.
"If I'm not connected to your mind, I would make a poor guide."
He blinks, then looks back the way we came, toward the door housing his shabby home, the pitiful, broken Christmas tree, and stained walls. The place where he trembled before his mother.
"I'd rather not share all my worst memories." He frowns. "Some things are private."
Not here, I want to say again, but I see there's no point. However, there's just enough tenderness blooming through him now, just enough vulnerability, a small sprout of verdant hope in a city of cold, brutal silver, that I sigh and move in his direction.
"If I remain disconnected from your mind, I shall witness my own temptations and genesis moments. Not yours. It will prove difficult for me and render me less able to help you."
“But you've made it through before?" The intensity radiating from him feels like a freshly sharpened blade.
"Many times. However, it's been years upon years since I've traversed my own temptations in this realm."
It's something I swore never to endure again. Yet, as he has since the moment I first glimpsed him, this tall specter of a man pulls at me with gravitational force I cannot name.
I already fear what I may agree to at his suggestion. Perhaps I'm not yet immune to temptation, to being swallowed by the swamp.
But that insecurity flickers across his features again, brief as a candle flame in the wind, but unmistakable.
"I'll remain with you, if you wish it," I say softly.
At my words, he turns fully to the door and opens it.