A/N: Remember when I said this would be the last chapter? I lied because the finale ended up going long enough I thought it should be separated into two chapters. So, the next chapter will be the last.

Also, yes, I am injecting Emerson into scenes that he's not nessessarily needed just bc I love his character. Anyways, carry on. 

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          I probably don't have to tell you that Chris desperately didn't want me to go to Hell. He begged me, even yelled and screamed, but I had to do this. No one else was going to be able to. In way, this must've been how Croc felt when he left Kuza. Even though you want to stay with the one you love, you have duties in life. There's no one else in this house that could do this. 

          Ghost deserves to have his son back. He's lost one already this year. I'm not letting him lose another. Chris understand that, but he still was terrified to let me leave. That's understandable, considering what I'm walking into. I'm literally putting myself in the middle of a way. Even bringing Ricky and Kuza with me didn't settle his unstable mind. Emerson decided to tag along as well. Why? I don't fucking know. It's not like we need a medic. I could manage on my own, but I suppose death doesn't scare him.

          With the bridge destroyed, the Bifrost was out of order, so to speak. We had to use Ghost to get through. He's not perfect though. His portals have a tendency to drop us a mile or so off from where we're supposed to be. Besides that, we really didn't know exactly where we were supposed to be. We just had a general area that we guesstimated. 

          Being back in Hell wasn't easy. The dark forces were so strong. They fed off the anger and rage that occupied the lands. Even from down in here, miles below the surface, we could hear the bombs and bullets. Despite how hard it was to navigate the ravine, I was grateful we were down here and not up there. All the death, you could feel it shaking your bones. It made my chest heavy. Well, maybe that was the vapors we were walking through.

          The rocks on either side of the river were as red as the Devil's skin. A purple smoke, of which I had no idea what it was or where it came from, floated around us like fog. The others tell me that's not from the war. It's always been here. I know that much is true because Chris had mentioned the purple smoke to me before. He'd told me it was under his home, back when he lived here. 

          Kuza wasn't lying when he said there was a blood river down here. I just home none of the liquid that flowed belonged to anyone we knew. It was fucking dark down here too. Luckily, fairies glow in the dark. Kitty was like a beacon for us. I rarely fly when I'm close to the ground. Most angels don't because our wings are built more for soaring. Fairies, however, barely have their feet on the ground. She fluttered a few feet up from the rocks.

          There was, oddly, some hope when we saw debris from the bridge. That meant we were close to wherever the others were. Provided that they didn't travel away from the wreck, that is. We had to climb above a massive piece of the bridge that was blocking the entire ravine. Kitty got up there faster than us. She gasped softly, covering her mouth with her hands. When I reached the top of the blockade, I realized why.

          "Christ." Emerson muttered.

          There were hundreds of bodies. Not a single one was alive. I couldn't see any auras. It was too dark to see faces, even with the help of Kitty's glow. Kuza was on the other side of me. He wrapped his arms around himself tightly, his chest rising and falling rapidly. His eyes scanned over every body but he couldn't find what he was looking for. Granted, he could see better in the dark than I could. Still, it was too hard to tell from up here.

          "Kitty," I called for her, "You can see better than us down there. Will you look for someone for me?"

          She hesitantly nodded. A fairy wouldn't deny helping people but I doubt she wanted to scan through the faces of dead bodies. "What do they look like?"

          "A crocodile. He's a demon, not a reptile creature, but he looks like a crocodile. He's about eight feet tall, and he has dreads down to his waist." I replied. 

          Kitty took note, then dived down to the ravine floor to begin her search. I set my hand on Kuza's shoulder comfortingly. He leaned into me and I wrapped my wing around him. The poor thing was shivering out of fear. I hope she finds nothing. There wasn't a damn soul down there. If she did find a body, he'd definitely be dead. I want to believe Kuza's intuition. I want to believe Croc could be alive. 

          After a few minutes had passed, she returned to where we stood. "Nothing. I'm sorry."

          "No, no. That's a good thing." I spoke to both her and the crying vampire on my shoulder, "That means he could be alive somewhere else."

          "Let's keep moving." Ricky replied. 

          Kuza parted away from me to follow him down. The two started to climb down the ruble the best they could. 

          "I truly hope you're right, Angelo. That boy isn't going to want to live without his partner." Emerson said. He jumped down, landing flawlessly after taking a twenty foot drop.

          I jumped down myself, using my wings to keep my self from falling. "Boy?" I scoffed, "He's probably older than you."

          "Exactly how old do you thing I am?" He curiously asked.

          "Um, well... I actually don't know." 

          He hopped up on a rock in efforts to avoid walking over dead bodies. "I'm two thousand, four hundred, and forty two years old." He said it like it was no big deal. 

          "Holy shit. You look damn good for your age." I replied, following him as he hopped from rock to rock.

          "Why, thank you. I'd like to think I aged the most gracefully out of all my brothers and I. You're all quite older yourself, aren't you?" 

          "I turned a millennia this year." I answered, "Ricky's about three decades past five hundred. I don't know how old Mike is." 

          "Four hundred and seventy six." He replied, "Croc is about the same age as Chris... Hey, do fairies age? I haven't really ever known one."

          Kitty giggled, flying lowly beside him as he walked, "Yes, we do. We're not immortal but we do age five times slower than humans. So, I look eighteen, but I'm actually ninety."

          Well, damn. That explains why she'd get married at her age. I was getting concerned that Cecil was really robbing the cradle with her. For her age, she still seemed so... innocent and pure. I guess it's something all fairies are naturally inclined to. I rarely got any in the hospital I worked at in Heaven. They're the hippies of the magic world. They believe in all natural remedies and would only ever resort to medical care if it was dire. 

          How she could stand being in a dark world as harsh as Hell shocked me. That amulet she wears protects her from a lot, but even so, the energy in this place is a lot for her small body. She's driven by love to be here. That has to be the only reason she's managed to stay so strong. I'd bargain to say her and Emerson are holding up the best out of any of us. Ricky and Kuza were going a little slow but nothing to be worried about. I felt my normal amount of tired, which came from my Hallow Hex.

          It felt like we were walking forever. How'd they get this far from the rest of the wreck? At some point, a very harsh wind rushed through the valley. Kitty tumbled end over end until Emerson caught her by the hand. I felt the feathers of my own wings being pulled on. He pulled her onto the ground where she began to shiver.

          "I-It's c-cold... In H-Hell?" She shuttered. 

          "Hell is literally freezing over." Ricky said, "We need to get going and get out of here."

          Kitty forced herself to point towards a cave entrance, though it pained her to move her hand away from her body like that. She stayed close to Emerson. He picked her up, leading us as he carried her into the cave. A cold front like that could easily break her wings. They're like glass. If you take them from a hundred degrees to negative ten in two seconds, they'll shatter.

          She pushed herself away from Emerson and rushed deeper into the cave. We hurried to follow, worried of what she could run into. Plus, we needed her light to guide us. Even if we could see in the dark, it was still pitch fucking black. Kitty fell down on her knees in front of her husband the second she saw him. He was alive and from the looks of it, in better shape than the rest of the survivors around them.

          Ricky knelt down beside his son, "You know you gave your mother a fucking heart attack when you ran off. You could've have stopped to tell us where you were going?"

          "Mom wouldn't have let me leave." He muttered. Cecil stood up, having to grasp the stone wall beside him in doing so. He hugged Kitty tightly, being careful of her wings, of course. "I had to go get my baby girl myself."

          "Let's just get out of this fucking Hellhole." He responded.

          Emerson cleared his throat to grab Ricky's attention. He nodded his head in Kuza's directly. We hadn't paid him much attention considering he was being quiet for once. His arms wrapped around his thin body in attempts to comfort himself. We didn't see Croc anywhere. There was plenty of other survivors, around ten, but none were demons. 

          Kitty got up on her tip toes, whispering something in Cecil's ear. He gave her a small nod and told her something in response that I didn't quiet hear. I'd like to think, whatever they were discussing, it could've been something good for once. Sure, having Cecil back is great in itself, but I'd like to hope the world wouldn't be so unfair to Kuza. 

           The little fairy fluttered up towards a cavern higher up in the cave. She flew in there so fearlessly. When a growl barked at her, she flew back out just as quickly. It scared me, honestly. The noise wasn't just a growl; it was a hiss. Something that would rattle your bones, something that you'd hear from a creature in the murkiest of swamps. It may have shook the rest of us down to our core, but it ignited a light of hope in Kuza's dark eyes. 

          From the dark reassesses of that higher up cavern, a tall figure slowly emerged. The second I saw the tattooed green scales of his skin, I was relieved. There's a sentence I never thought I'd say. Kuza, as batshit crazy as I thought he was, was right; Croc was alive. He did look a little pale. As pale as he could look, having some of his skin white, that is. Regardless, he was alive, which meant Kuza was going to be able to continue living. I was starting to fear he'd kill himself if he had to live without Croc.

          At first, there was anger on his face. He hadn't appreciated being woken up, I see. The second he spotted Kuza, he turned into a teddy bear. He hopped off the ledge he inhabited, making a hard landing on the ground below. Kuza could barely wait another second to run up and hug him. Not that Croc objected. Of course he embraced his boyfriend as quickly as he could. 

          "My little baby," He mused, "What're you doing here? You know it's unsafe."

           "I came for you. Someone told me you were dead, and all the others believed him, but I refused to. I knew you weren't. I could feel it." He replied, resting his head on his chest.

          "Now, let's get out of here. Ghost is going to open a tear right in front of the hospital, so we can get all of these people to medical care." Ricky informed us.

          "I hope you know, you don't get the day off today." Emerson smiled like a sly fox at me, "Our day is far from over."

          "No," I sighed, "It's just beginning."

          "My friend, let me tell you something I've learned in all my years. Seeing the beginning is even more powerful than seeing the end." 

          Alright, whatever that means. Elves our the philosophers of the supernatural world. Sometimes, what they say might not always make sense now, but it will eventually. I'm sure I'll find meaning for what he said. Someway, somehow. Although I've had plenty of years under my belt, I know I still have much more to learn.

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A/N: I didn't put this at the beginning bc I didn't want to spoil anything but here's what crocodiles sound like incase you're curious what Croc's hissing and roars would sound like. Warning, it creeped me out the first time I heard it, so proceed with caution. 

https://youtu.be/8Hye31i3cUI