Hellboy: Darkness Calls
Encyclopedia
Hellboy: Darkness Calls is a comic book
limited series
created by Mike Mignola
published by Dark Horse Comics
starring Hellboy
.
Chapter One: In a tomb near Lucca
, Italy
, Igor Bromhead (last seen in Hellboy: Box Full of Evil) summons the witch-goddess Hecate
to a catacomb using runes written in blood. She demands to see the lizard body with which the devil Astaroth
had cursed him and he obliges. Before she can destroy him he surprises her by invoking her secret name, which, ever since her resurrection in Hellboy: Wake the Devil
, has been that of Ilsa Haupstein, her luckless human host. Bromhead reveals the bones of Haupstein's lover and Hecate's son, Vladimir Giurescu, from which he has magically wrung the information which gives him full power over the horrified goddess. Back in England, three witches meet among standing stones; they have recovered the horns Hellboy broke from his skull during Hellboy: Wake the Devil
and carved a bust of him from one of them. Hellboy wakes in the house of Harry Middleton, an old friend of his and of his adoptive father Trevor Bruttenholm
. Under the witches' (and the carved horn's) influence, Hellboy decides to go for a walk, but not before accepting a vintage pistol and holster from Middleton as a gift. On his walk into the woods he is followed by a troop of cats and spied upon from the trees by a haggard specter with copper coins for eyes. Hellboy encounters two odd men and a woman who see him and cut short their rendition of the evocative "Mister Stormalong"
sea shanty, whose monster-hunting folk hero they identify with Hellboy, and whose verses we have been hearing over several pages of captions. They inform Hellboy that they have reached the spot where corrupt 17th-century witchfinder Henry Hood hung three witches, "their ladies," who cursed him with torture and undeath (he is the coin-eyed specter we have seen). After hearing the hanging scene reenacted, the trio rush off to find the burial site of the three hanged witches, whose doting animal familiars they reveal themselves to be: while Hellboy finds himself immobilized (by the spell being cast on his horn) they begin to assume the shapes of a frog, a raven and a cat, resurrecting their former mistresses with a potion poured on their gravesite, and promising Hellboy a gathering of witches (both alive and dead) "like none before in the history of the world" telling Hellboy: "They gather for you!!"
Chapter Two: The three witches with the carved horn thank the night and its associated powers for binding Hellboy and for resurrecting their three dead sister witches, executed by Henry Hood but now flying about a shocked Hellboy. The three greet their dead mistresses happily but Henry Hood bursts upon them transfixing two of them with the blue unearthly fire of his cutlass. It also wounds the half-demon Hellboy, who he attacks for his hellish parentage, leaving Hellboy reluctantly to be rescued by the third witch and her raven familiar who carry Hellboy off amid a flock of undead witches "to the sabbath at Leeds
" until he shoots her with Harry Middleton's pistol and, dropped, plummets from the sky. He has not escaped, however, as he crashes through the roof of a disused, cobwebbed church and finds it filled with live witches who await him, having summoned him there using his carved horn. For a cautious, inquisitive Hellboy, they recount the scene between Bromhead and Hecate, filling in relevant history from Hellboy: Wake the Devil
and showing a triumphant Bromhead removing Ilsa Haupstein's wailing corpse from the Iron Maiden
in which she had become Hecate, and bricking it into an alcove with Giurescu's still-amorous skeleton, there to wait "till Doomsday." Bromhead had then tried futilely and disastrously to become King of the Witches by drawing down lunar powers beyond his strength. They tell Hellboy that as the son of a human witch and of the demon ruling the witches of Lancashire
and Abbotsbury
(and East Bromwich
, Faversham
and Berkswell
), they have selected him as their king. Hellboy angrily refuses them, declares himself at war with them, and begins to make his way out of the church. The carved horn shatters. Panic-stricken, the witches cast about for a plan, when Koku,, a diminutive servant of Hellboy's old enemy the Baba Yaga
, appears and conveys his mistress' offer to take Hellboy off their hands if they (who unlike the Baba Yaga still live in the real world) "offer" him to her. The witches agree, and Hellboy steps out of the church into the middle of a vast and empty wintry expanse through which an army of armed and fur-clad skeletons approach. Amidst the thicket of impaled lantern skulls in which she keeps her power, we see the Baba Yaga promising to take Hellboy's eye (in return for the one of hers he'd shot out decades before in "Hellboy: The Baba Yaga") and (as the arriving army reports to Hellboy) also his life.
Chapter Three: Back in the church, the witches debate who will rule them if not Hecate or Hellboy. The Gruagach of Loch Leane
, Hellboy's vengeful fairy nemesis, arrives offering to go fetch a witch they poisoned and cut in pieces, one that they still fear, who should be their queen, and could rescue them from dwindling into nothing, and also "make the daytime world weep with fear." Meanwhile in the snowy plain "beyond the thrice-nine lands in the thrice-tenth kingdom" the Baba Yaga's army attacks Hellboy, who fights for a while and then runs into a wood. Giant wolves rush from the wood to attack the Baba Yaga's soldiers, and a giant white wolf guides Hellboy into the woods to the campfire of his master, the Leshii. Hellboy bores the Leshii who is nonetheless happy to save Hellboy in order to spite the Baba Yaga. before departing in the form of a giant horned bear, the Leshii warns Hellboy to stay in the woods only for one night. He asks Perun
, the Russian storm-god, to destroy the army, which is buried in snow, as Hellboy finds them when, just before daybreak, he is chased from the woods by the Leshii's wolves. Thwarted, the Baba Yaga flies in her mortar and pestle to the castle of Koschei the Deathless, who broods, cobwebbed on his throne, demanding that if he helps her, she must give him the gift of death. She promises to set him free from life in return for Hellboy's head. Meanwhile Hellboy finds his way through winter storm to a small house where he resists a brief attack from, and then makes friends with, the house's guardian spirit or Domovoi
. The Domovoi tells him that Perun is hiding him from the Baba Yaga and from Koschei using the storm weather, but that Koschei cannot be killed as his soul is inside an egg inside a duck inside a rabbit inside a goat which the Baba Yaga has hidden. Meanwhile the Baba Yaga finds Perun (who we have just seen as a spear-armed horseman riding above stormclouds) drawing lightning branches with a stick in the mud of a riverbank, a mud-caked and naked old man. Her soldiers dispatch him with arrows as she tells him she will tolerate no other Russian gods than herself.
Chapter Four: A bird grieves over Perun's body, meanwhile somewhere in England, blood wells over the lintel of a hilltop church, flowing from two murdered monks. A hole in the floor before the altar leads to an ancient cavern where the Gruagach and two elfin servants approach a well with a giant iron lid. When Gruagach rings on the lid with his hammer, a giant appears who puts on spectacles to read the letter Gruagach hands him - from the giant's masters, the witches of Britain - and then begins to weep at what he must do. He raises the lid and climbs down to get his prisoner for the Gruagach. With Perun dead, meanwhile, the storm outside Hellboy's cottage has failed, and Koschei kicks in the door. The two fight as Koschei explains his intentions and motives, and the Domovoi wails over his broken furniture. Hellboy impales Koschei and beheads him but Koschei merely reattaches his head. At that moment Vasilisa
, appearing at the cottage's door, subdues Koschei with light from the skull she received from Baba Yaga in her legend. Hellboy pins Koschei to the floor with his own sword and they run. Kosschei ignores the Domovoi's goading, extricates himself, and takes out an arrow from his pack. Vasilisa explains to Hellboy the story of her magic doll and her time with the Baba Yaga, and shows Hellboy the tunnel back to the real world, before falling to the first of Koschei's arrows, which also pepper Hellboy as Koschei rides on them. Dying, Vasilis gives Hellboy the wooden comb and blue handkerchief her doll had given her ("When I was old and grey and dying in my bed," she says) and then becomes her doll, still pierced by Koschei's arrow. Hellboy confronts the now-arrived Koschei.
Chapter Five: At Yggdrasil
, the world tree, a squirrel, (never identified specifically as Ratatosk
) worries aloud that Ragnarok
has come with the death of Vasilisa, but one of the Baba Yaga's soldiers shoots him and he dies. The Baba Yaga, Koku, and a figure that seems to be Death
watch from their place at the tree's roots. In the distance, Hellboy tosses Vasilisa's comb at Koschei, who tosses it over his shoulder. Where it hits the earth a small forest springs up, its branches lifting Koschei into the sky and growing agonizingly through his chest and limbs. The Baba Yaga insists that there is no longer a place even in the real world to which Hellboy can run, and back in the hilltop church, the giant climbs out of his well carrying a small wooden box containing the dismembered and segmented body of his prisoner. He then climbs tearfully back into the hole, pulling the lid down over him, in order to escape the new and bloody world coming into being. Tugging the box out of the church, Gruagach and his companions tell a small bird (who will next appear in the opening scene of Hellboy: The Wild Hunt
) that it had best tell its mistress to choose sides "for our new queen is here." Elsewhere, the lead fairy from Hellboy: The Corpse asks the Dagda
, fairy king, how bad it will be and the Dagda answers "We will not survive it." In the Thrice-Tenth Kingdom, Hellboy begins to climb toward the tunnel back to reality; but the Baba Yaga calls for Koschei's soul and begins to breathe her power into its mouth. Up in the branches, Koschei screams as his body bursts with light and fire burning free of the branches. He descends blazing upon Hellboy as the Baba Yaga anticipates using Hellboy's eye to look into Hell and into secret places to learn "the secret workings of all things." As Hellboy crushes Koschei beneath a boulder, the Baba Yaga repeats that Hellboy has no home left in the real world, and through the tunnel we see England's witches flying about their cobwebbed church celebrating the approach of their new queen. She breathes more power into the goat and Koschei bursts up through the stone as a blazing giant, screaming "DEATH!"
Chapter Six: The Baba Yaga's ten thousand skull lanterns are going out, all their power breathed into Koschei. Meanwhile two of Baba Yaga's undead soldiers reminisce about serving under Koschei when alive, and pity his servitude to the witch. Koschei begs Hellboy to accept death, and regrets that he is cursed to keep killing Vasilisa. The Baba Yaga breathes her last spark of life into Koschei who still cannot defeat Hellboy. She considers using the spirit of Rasputin which she had stored in an acorn since the epilogue of Hellboy: Conqueror Worm, but Koku knocks it from her hand so it falls through the roots of the World Tree into Hell. Defeated, Koschei hurls his sword at and into a departing Hellboy's back, so that he drops Vasilisa's blue handkerchief which becomes a flood to carry Koshchei's body away. Death explains to the Baba Yaga that "Hellboy is as deathless as Koschei" and his eye must be given freely, for which Hellboy is not yet ready. Hellboy wanders through the tunnel into the cobwebbed church (now empty), where he silently passes the ghostly figure of Vasilisa, lighting a cigar and reaching back to pull out Koschei's sword. Henry Hood greets him in the churchyard repeating "Finish it" before dissolving into dust and two copper coins. Scratched in the rust of Hood's cutlass are is the name: IGOR BROMHEAD. Forty-two hours later in Italy, near Lucca, two villagers show Hellboy where Bromhead has been hiding - he has been eating their sheep. Having swallowed the moon, he has bloated into a monstrous giant human worm. He begs Hellboy to kill him, while two witches, flying as birds, urge that he be left to his fate. Hellboy asks if he's ready and then stabs him with Hood's cutlass. Dying, and once again with a fully human body, Bromhead tells Hellboy that he will see him in Hell, and that he sees him there already, seated on a dragon at the head of his army. Meanwhile the Dagda meets the Gruagach and his friends, who have dragged their new queen's box to the top of a hill. He begs the Gruagach to see reason and one of the Gruagach's two bodies stabs him fatally in the back, before stabbing his own heart in remorse. The Gruagach announces the arrival of the watching fairies' new queen, who says from her box (one corner washed by the golden stream of Dagda's blood) "My day's come at last... and woe unto man."
Epilogue one: At the Colorado headquarters of Hellboy's old agency, the B.P.R.D.
, Kate Corrigan
is reading to Liz Sherman
and Abe Sapien
from a letter that has arrived from Hellboy. Kate is alarmed when Abe points out that Harry Middleton has been dead for over twenty years.
Epilogue two: In the Italian catacomb, the spirit of Sir Edward Grey confronts the imprisoned Hecate. She tells Grey that she is his queen, in whose shadow he has walked a long time. At his request she tells him of her fatal seduction of Thoth king of the Hyperborean city of Gorinium, after which she had gone into his garden and killed his three captive angels, drinking their blood, and vomited the blood up in his temple, with it to inscribe the temple walls with the contents of Thoth's forty secret books of angelic knowledge. The knowledge made public had destroyed the Hyperborean empire but Hecate, cursed by Thoth with her current snakelike form, tells Grey she is still unrepentant at her mission to enlighten and free mankind: she insists that she is beyond human knowledge, and she tells Grey that she will sleep until the last day when Hellboy calls her, prophesying: "However his war ends, he will be lost. It will be for you to find him. And you will. And true to his nature he shall be both your salvation and your destruction. Before you are finally allowed to die, you will suffer as few men have ever suffered. You will learn to do evil to accomplish good." Then the tomb is silent again.
with two new epilogues:
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
limited series
Limited series
A limited series is a comic book series with a set number of installments. A limited series differs from an ongoing series in that the number of issues is determined before production and it differs from a one shot in that it is composed of multiple issues....
created by Mike Mignola
Mike Mignola
Michael Joseph "Mike" Mignola is an American comic book artist and writer who created the comic book series Hellboy for Dark Horse Comics. He has worked for animation projects such as Atlantis: The Lost Empire and the adaptation of his one shot comic book, The Amazing Screw-On Head.-Career:Mignola...
published by Dark Horse Comics
Dark Horse Comics
Dark Horse Comics is the largest independent American comic book and manga publisher.Dark Horse Comics was founded in 1986 by Mike Richardson in Milwaukie, Oregon, with the concept of establishing an ideal atmosphere for creative professionals. Richardson started out by opening his first comic book...
starring Hellboy
Hellboy
Hellboy is a comic book superhero created by writer-artist Mike Mignola. The character first appeared in San Diego Comic-Con Comics #2 , and has since appeared in various eponymous miniseries, one-shots and intercompany crossovers...
.
Plot
In Darkness Calls, several plotlines and characters from earlier stories converge.Chapter One: In a tomb near Lucca
Lucca
Lucca is a city and comune in Tuscany, central Italy, situated on the river Serchio in a fertile plainnear the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Lucca...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Igor Bromhead (last seen in Hellboy: Box Full of Evil) summons the witch-goddess Hecate
Hecate
Hecate or Hekate is a chthonic Greco-Roman goddess associated with magic, witchcraft, necromancy, and crossroads.She is attested in poetry as early as Hesiod's Theogony...
to a catacomb using runes written in blood. She demands to see the lizard body with which the devil Astaroth
Astaroth
Astaroth , in demonology, is a Crowned Prince of Hell. He is a male figure named after the Canaanite goddess Ashtoreth.-Background:...
had cursed him and he obliges. Before she can destroy him he surprises her by invoking her secret name, which, ever since her resurrection in Hellboy: Wake the Devil
Hellboy: Wake the Devil
Hellboy: Wake the Devil is a five-issue comic book mini-series in the Hellboy franchise, conceived and illustrated by Mike Mignola and published by Dark Horse Comics...
, has been that of Ilsa Haupstein, her luckless human host. Bromhead reveals the bones of Haupstein's lover and Hecate's son, Vladimir Giurescu, from which he has magically wrung the information which gives him full power over the horrified goddess. Back in England, three witches meet among standing stones; they have recovered the horns Hellboy broke from his skull during Hellboy: Wake the Devil
Hellboy: Wake the Devil
Hellboy: Wake the Devil is a five-issue comic book mini-series in the Hellboy franchise, conceived and illustrated by Mike Mignola and published by Dark Horse Comics...
and carved a bust of him from one of them. Hellboy wakes in the house of Harry Middleton, an old friend of his and of his adoptive father Trevor Bruttenholm
Trevor Bruttenholm
Professor Trevor Bruttenholm is a fictional character in the Hellboy comic book universe, created by Mike Mignola and John Byrne. His first appearance was in the comic book Hellboy: Seed of Destruction, issue #1 .-Fictional character biography:...
. Under the witches' (and the carved horn's) influence, Hellboy decides to go for a walk, but not before accepting a vintage pistol and holster from Middleton as a gift. On his walk into the woods he is followed by a troop of cats and spied upon from the trees by a haggard specter with copper coins for eyes. Hellboy encounters two odd men and a woman who see him and cut short their rendition of the evocative "Mister Stormalong"
Alfred Bulltop Stormalong
Captain Alfred Bulltop Stormalong was an American folk hero and the subject of numerous nautical-themed tall tales originating in Massachusetts. Stormalong was said to be a sailor and a giant, some tall; he was the master of a huge clipper ship known in various sources as either the Courser or the...
sea shanty, whose monster-hunting folk hero they identify with Hellboy, and whose verses we have been hearing over several pages of captions. They inform Hellboy that they have reached the spot where corrupt 17th-century witchfinder Henry Hood hung three witches, "their ladies," who cursed him with torture and undeath (he is the coin-eyed specter we have seen). After hearing the hanging scene reenacted, the trio rush off to find the burial site of the three hanged witches, whose doting animal familiars they reveal themselves to be: while Hellboy finds himself immobilized (by the spell being cast on his horn) they begin to assume the shapes of a frog, a raven and a cat, resurrecting their former mistresses with a potion poured on their gravesite, and promising Hellboy a gathering of witches (both alive and dead) "like none before in the history of the world" telling Hellboy: "They gather for you!!"
Chapter Two: The three witches with the carved horn thank the night and its associated powers for binding Hellboy and for resurrecting their three dead sister witches, executed by Henry Hood but now flying about a shocked Hellboy. The three greet their dead mistresses happily but Henry Hood bursts upon them transfixing two of them with the blue unearthly fire of his cutlass. It also wounds the half-demon Hellboy, who he attacks for his hellish parentage, leaving Hellboy reluctantly to be rescued by the third witch and her raven familiar who carry Hellboy off amid a flock of undead witches "to the sabbath at Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
" until he shoots her with Harry Middleton's pistol and, dropped, plummets from the sky. He has not escaped, however, as he crashes through the roof of a disused, cobwebbed church and finds it filled with live witches who await him, having summoned him there using his carved horn. For a cautious, inquisitive Hellboy, they recount the scene between Bromhead and Hecate, filling in relevant history from Hellboy: Wake the Devil
Hellboy: Wake the Devil
Hellboy: Wake the Devil is a five-issue comic book mini-series in the Hellboy franchise, conceived and illustrated by Mike Mignola and published by Dark Horse Comics...
and showing a triumphant Bromhead removing Ilsa Haupstein's wailing corpse from the Iron Maiden
Iron Maiden
Iron Maiden are an English heavy metal band from Leyton in east London, formed in 1975 by bassist and primary songwriter Steve Harris. Since their inception, the band's discography has grown to include a total of thirty-six albums: fifteen studio albums; eleven live albums; four EPs; and six...
in which she had become Hecate, and bricking it into an alcove with Giurescu's still-amorous skeleton, there to wait "till Doomsday." Bromhead had then tried futilely and disastrously to become King of the Witches by drawing down lunar powers beyond his strength. They tell Hellboy that as the son of a human witch and of the demon ruling the witches of Lancashire
Lancashire
Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...
and Abbotsbury
Abbotsbury
Abbotsbury is a large village and civil parish in the West Dorset district of Dorset, England; situated north-west of Weymouth. It is located from Upwey railway station and from Bournemouth International Airport. The main road running through the village is the B3157, connecting Abbotsbury to...
(and East Bromwich
East Bromwich
East Bromwich is a fictional English village in the Hellboy series of comics, named in reference to West Bromwich. It is the location of Hellboy's arrival on Earth after his summoning by Rasputin....
, Faversham
Faversham
Faversham is a market town and civil parish in the Swale borough of Kent, England. The parish of Faversham grew up around an ancient sea port on Faversham Creek and was the birthplace of the explosives industry in England.-History:...
and Berkswell
Berkswell
Berkswell is a village and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull, county of West Midlands, England.- Geography:It is in the east of the borough, borders Coventry and is about west of Coventry city centre.- History and places of interest :...
), they have selected him as their king. Hellboy angrily refuses them, declares himself at war with them, and begins to make his way out of the church. The carved horn shatters. Panic-stricken, the witches cast about for a plan, when Koku,, a diminutive servant of Hellboy's old enemy the Baba Yaga
Baba Yaga
Baba Yaga or Baba Roga is a haggish or witchlike character in Slavic folklore. She flies around on a giant pestle, kidnaps small children, and lives in a hut that stands on chicken legs...
, appears and conveys his mistress' offer to take Hellboy off their hands if they (who unlike the Baba Yaga still live in the real world) "offer" him to her. The witches agree, and Hellboy steps out of the church into the middle of a vast and empty wintry expanse through which an army of armed and fur-clad skeletons approach. Amidst the thicket of impaled lantern skulls in which she keeps her power, we see the Baba Yaga promising to take Hellboy's eye (in return for the one of hers he'd shot out decades before in "Hellboy: The Baba Yaga") and (as the arriving army reports to Hellboy) also his life.
Chapter Three: Back in the church, the witches debate who will rule them if not Hecate or Hellboy. The Gruagach of Loch Leane
Gruagach (Hellboy)
Gruagach is a fictional character, created by writer-artist Mike Mignola. He first appeared as the main antagonist in the short story Hellboy: The Corpse, and then reappeared in Hellboy: Strange Places, developing into a major antagonist similar to Prince Nuada, the antagonist of the film Hellboy...
, Hellboy's vengeful fairy nemesis, arrives offering to go fetch a witch they poisoned and cut in pieces, one that they still fear, who should be their queen, and could rescue them from dwindling into nothing, and also "make the daytime world weep with fear." Meanwhile in the snowy plain "beyond the thrice-nine lands in the thrice-tenth kingdom" the Baba Yaga's army attacks Hellboy, who fights for a while and then runs into a wood. Giant wolves rush from the wood to attack the Baba Yaga's soldiers, and a giant white wolf guides Hellboy into the woods to the campfire of his master, the Leshii. Hellboy bores the Leshii who is nonetheless happy to save Hellboy in order to spite the Baba Yaga. before departing in the form of a giant horned bear, the Leshii warns Hellboy to stay in the woods only for one night. He asks Perun
Perun
In Slavic mythology, Perun is the highest god of the pantheon and the god of thunder and lightning. His other attributes were the fire, mountains, the oak, iris, eagle, firmament , horses and carts, weapons and war...
, the Russian storm-god, to destroy the army, which is buried in snow, as Hellboy finds them when, just before daybreak, he is chased from the woods by the Leshii's wolves. Thwarted, the Baba Yaga flies in her mortar and pestle to the castle of Koschei the Deathless, who broods, cobwebbed on his throne, demanding that if he helps her, she must give him the gift of death. She promises to set him free from life in return for Hellboy's head. Meanwhile Hellboy finds his way through winter storm to a small house where he resists a brief attack from, and then makes friends with, the house's guardian spirit or Domovoi
Domovoi
A domovoi or domovoy is a house spirit in Slavic folklore. The plural form in Russian can be transliterated domoviye or domovye ....
. The Domovoi tells him that Perun is hiding him from the Baba Yaga and from Koschei using the storm weather, but that Koschei cannot be killed as his soul is inside an egg inside a duck inside a rabbit inside a goat which the Baba Yaga has hidden. Meanwhile the Baba Yaga finds Perun (who we have just seen as a spear-armed horseman riding above stormclouds) drawing lightning branches with a stick in the mud of a riverbank, a mud-caked and naked old man. Her soldiers dispatch him with arrows as she tells him she will tolerate no other Russian gods than herself.
Chapter Four: A bird grieves over Perun's body, meanwhile somewhere in England, blood wells over the lintel of a hilltop church, flowing from two murdered monks. A hole in the floor before the altar leads to an ancient cavern where the Gruagach and two elfin servants approach a well with a giant iron lid. When Gruagach rings on the lid with his hammer, a giant appears who puts on spectacles to read the letter Gruagach hands him - from the giant's masters, the witches of Britain - and then begins to weep at what he must do. He raises the lid and climbs down to get his prisoner for the Gruagach. With Perun dead, meanwhile, the storm outside Hellboy's cottage has failed, and Koschei kicks in the door. The two fight as Koschei explains his intentions and motives, and the Domovoi wails over his broken furniture. Hellboy impales Koschei and beheads him but Koschei merely reattaches his head. At that moment Vasilisa
The Frog Princess
The Frog Princess is a fairy tale that exists in many versions from several countries.Russian variants include the Frog Princess or Tsarevna Frog and also Vasilisa the Wise ; Alexander Afanasyev collected variants in his Narodnye russkie skazki...
, appearing at the cottage's door, subdues Koschei with light from the skull she received from Baba Yaga in her legend. Hellboy pins Koschei to the floor with his own sword and they run. Kosschei ignores the Domovoi's goading, extricates himself, and takes out an arrow from his pack. Vasilisa explains to Hellboy the story of her magic doll and her time with the Baba Yaga, and shows Hellboy the tunnel back to the real world, before falling to the first of Koschei's arrows, which also pepper Hellboy as Koschei rides on them. Dying, Vasilis gives Hellboy the wooden comb and blue handkerchief her doll had given her ("When I was old and grey and dying in my bed," she says) and then becomes her doll, still pierced by Koschei's arrow. Hellboy confronts the now-arrived Koschei.
Chapter Five: At Yggdrasil
Yggdrasil
In Norse mythology, Yggdrasil is an immense tree that is central in Norse cosmology. It was said to be the world tree around which the nine worlds existed...
, the world tree, a squirrel, (never identified specifically as Ratatosk
Ratatosk
In Norse mythology, Ratatoskr is a squirrel who runs up and down the world tree Yggdrasil to carry messages between the unnamed eagle, perched atop Yggdrasil, and the wyrm Níðhöggr, who dwells beneath one of the three roots of the tree...
) worries aloud that Ragnarok
Ragnarök
In Norse mythology, Ragnarök is a series of future events, including a great battle foretold to ultimately result in the death of a number of major figures , the occurrence of various natural disasters, and the subsequent submersion of the world in water...
has come with the death of Vasilisa, but one of the Baba Yaga's soldiers shoots him and he dies. The Baba Yaga, Koku, and a figure that seems to be Death
Death
Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include old age, predation, malnutrition, disease, and accidents or trauma resulting in terminal injury....
watch from their place at the tree's roots. In the distance, Hellboy tosses Vasilisa's comb at Koschei, who tosses it over his shoulder. Where it hits the earth a small forest springs up, its branches lifting Koschei into the sky and growing agonizingly through his chest and limbs. The Baba Yaga insists that there is no longer a place even in the real world to which Hellboy can run, and back in the hilltop church, the giant climbs out of his well carrying a small wooden box containing the dismembered and segmented body of his prisoner. He then climbs tearfully back into the hole, pulling the lid down over him, in order to escape the new and bloody world coming into being. Tugging the box out of the church, Gruagach and his companions tell a small bird (who will next appear in the opening scene of Hellboy: The Wild Hunt
Hellboy: The Wild Hunt
Hellboy: The Wild Hunt is the ninth collected edition in Mike Mignola's Hellboy comic book series, the second of three connected story arcs written by Mignola and illustrated by Duncan Fegredo...
) that it had best tell its mistress to choose sides "for our new queen is here." Elsewhere, the lead fairy from Hellboy: The Corpse asks the Dagda
Dagda
The Dagda is an important god of Irish mythology.Dagda can also refer to:*Dagda, Latvia, a city in eastern Latvia*Dagda , an Irish New Age band...
, fairy king, how bad it will be and the Dagda answers "We will not survive it." In the Thrice-Tenth Kingdom, Hellboy begins to climb toward the tunnel back to reality; but the Baba Yaga calls for Koschei's soul and begins to breathe her power into its mouth. Up in the branches, Koschei screams as his body bursts with light and fire burning free of the branches. He descends blazing upon Hellboy as the Baba Yaga anticipates using Hellboy's eye to look into Hell and into secret places to learn "the secret workings of all things." As Hellboy crushes Koschei beneath a boulder, the Baba Yaga repeats that Hellboy has no home left in the real world, and through the tunnel we see England's witches flying about their cobwebbed church celebrating the approach of their new queen. She breathes more power into the goat and Koschei bursts up through the stone as a blazing giant, screaming "DEATH!"
Chapter Six: The Baba Yaga's ten thousand skull lanterns are going out, all their power breathed into Koschei. Meanwhile two of Baba Yaga's undead soldiers reminisce about serving under Koschei when alive, and pity his servitude to the witch. Koschei begs Hellboy to accept death, and regrets that he is cursed to keep killing Vasilisa. The Baba Yaga breathes her last spark of life into Koschei who still cannot defeat Hellboy. She considers using the spirit of Rasputin which she had stored in an acorn since the epilogue of Hellboy: Conqueror Worm, but Koku knocks it from her hand so it falls through the roots of the World Tree into Hell. Defeated, Koschei hurls his sword at and into a departing Hellboy's back, so that he drops Vasilisa's blue handkerchief which becomes a flood to carry Koshchei's body away. Death explains to the Baba Yaga that "Hellboy is as deathless as Koschei" and his eye must be given freely, for which Hellboy is not yet ready. Hellboy wanders through the tunnel into the cobwebbed church (now empty), where he silently passes the ghostly figure of Vasilisa, lighting a cigar and reaching back to pull out Koschei's sword. Henry Hood greets him in the churchyard repeating "Finish it" before dissolving into dust and two copper coins. Scratched in the rust of Hood's cutlass are is the name: IGOR BROMHEAD. Forty-two hours later in Italy, near Lucca, two villagers show Hellboy where Bromhead has been hiding - he has been eating their sheep. Having swallowed the moon, he has bloated into a monstrous giant human worm. He begs Hellboy to kill him, while two witches, flying as birds, urge that he be left to his fate. Hellboy asks if he's ready and then stabs him with Hood's cutlass. Dying, and once again with a fully human body, Bromhead tells Hellboy that he will see him in Hell, and that he sees him there already, seated on a dragon at the head of his army. Meanwhile the Dagda meets the Gruagach and his friends, who have dragged their new queen's box to the top of a hill. He begs the Gruagach to see reason and one of the Gruagach's two bodies stabs him fatally in the back, before stabbing his own heart in remorse. The Gruagach announces the arrival of the watching fairies' new queen, who says from her box (one corner washed by the golden stream of Dagda's blood) "My day's come at last... and woe unto man."
Epilogue one: At the Colorado headquarters of Hellboy's old agency, the B.P.R.D.
Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense
The Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense is a fictional organization in the comic book work of Mike Mignola, charged with protecting America and the world from the occult, paranormal and supernatural. It maintains the services of several supernatural persons, including Hellboy. The B.P.R.D...
, Kate Corrigan
Kate Corrigan
Kate Corrigan is a fictional character from the Dark Horse Comics universe, featured in the comic book series Hellboy and BPRD written by Mike Mignola, et al. Her appearance is based on Mignola's wife, Christine.-History:...
is reading to Liz Sherman
Liz Sherman
Elizabeth 'Liz' Sherman is a fictional character appearing in the Hellboy comic book series created by Mike Mignola.-Fictional character history:...
and Abe Sapien
Abe Sapien
Abraham "Abe" Sapien is a fictional character in the comic book series Hellboy, created by Mike Mignola. He takes his name from "Icthyo sapiens," the fanciful species designation chosen for him by his colleagues in the 19th-century Oannes Club, and from Abraham Lincoln, on whose assassination date...
from a letter that has arrived from Hellboy. Kate is alarmed when Abe points out that Harry Middleton has been dead for over twenty years.
Epilogue two: In the Italian catacomb, the spirit of Sir Edward Grey confronts the imprisoned Hecate. She tells Grey that she is his queen, in whose shadow he has walked a long time. At his request she tells him of her fatal seduction of Thoth king of the Hyperborean city of Gorinium, after which she had gone into his garden and killed his three captive angels, drinking their blood, and vomited the blood up in his temple, with it to inscribe the temple walls with the contents of Thoth's forty secret books of angelic knowledge. The knowledge made public had destroyed the Hyperborean empire but Hecate, cursed by Thoth with her current snakelike form, tells Grey she is still unrepentant at her mission to enlighten and free mankind: she insists that she is beyond human knowledge, and she tells Grey that she will sleep until the last day when Hellboy calls her, prophesying: "However his war ends, he will be lost. It will be for you to find him. And you will. And true to his nature he shall be both your salvation and your destruction. Before you are finally allowed to die, you will suffer as few men have ever suffered. You will learn to do evil to accomplish good." Then the tomb is silent again.
Collected editions
It was collected as the eighth Hellboy trade paperbackTrade paperback (comics)
In comics, a trade paperback is a collection of stories originally published in comic books, reprinted in book format, usually capturing one story arc from a single title or a series of stories with a connected story arc or common theme from one or more titles...
with two new epilogues:
- Darkness Calls (6-issue mini-series, Dark Horse ComicsDark Horse ComicsDark Horse Comics is the largest independent American comic book and manga publisher.Dark Horse Comics was founded in 1986 by Mike Richardson in Milwaukie, Oregon, with the concept of establishing an ideal atmosphere for creative professionals. Richardson started out by opening his first comic book...
, tpb, 192 pages, 2008, ISBN 978-1-59307-896-6)