With the conflict absolved, Jean tried to sleep. It was surprisingly easy, though it shouldn't have been because he only woke up a few hours ago. It looked like some of the habits from his body's past life had been retained, and soldiers were always taught to sleep when they could; it was a dear commodity to them that they never got when they wanted it.
However, as before, sleep persecuted him. This time, he found a third hell before him. It was beyond reason and far greater in power than the previous two, for when he arrived, his mind twisted and was transformed. A body formed around his soul, and a new spirit manifested to connect the two.
His body and spirit formed specifically to express rage that was not his by killing those he didn't know. It was senseless, vast, and blinding. A mushy field of human remains spread before him, miles and miles in all directions, with a dark sky of smoke and oblivion above him.
Massive behemoths waded through the rotting and burning remains to kill, maim, and mar one another, their bodies masses of blood and gore, with facsimiles of mouths roaring blind challenges to one another and the world as their bodies worked to end each other, to empty their rage, before they themselves were ended.
Jean was smaller than these behemoths, but his fists still ripped apart the flesh in front of him when he struck. He struck over and over again at whatever appeared in front of him; he battered whatever faced him; he clawed and used his nails to carve away at flesh; he took mouthfuls of blood from the others and screamed incomprehensibly as pain destroyed him; flames adorned his body as he burned alive in the chaos.
The ground beneath Jean grasped at him as corpses clawed at his feet and legs to empty themselves of their own rage. He worked his hands away to stubs. His feet could no longer support him as his Achilles was rent in half by a claw from the ground; the chaos around him took his head, and a skull sent flying from a behemoth's battle took his left breast.
But nothing would ever stand before such enmity. Even health, reason, logic, and death itself would relent, and his body reformed itself from nothing so that it could fight. Muscles wound themselves around half-formed bones, and sinew sprung from his skin to connect it.
From nothing, a new victim was formed as a fresh soul arrived, and a new spirit and body were molded to fit it in front of Jean. The image of an innocent young teen appeared in the midst of abominations, and it was cut down without mercy before it unleashed its own anger and was transformed into just another part of the hell.
Its body joined the fray and cut and killed and destroyed, and when it did, it became only another body in this spectacle of unending destruction.
The massacre went on with no end in sight for days before Jean encountered a behemoth himself. As he approached, his fists flew after a leg with the same diameter as his torso but found no purchase, so he bit the leg's exposed bone, but it was as hard as iron. His teeth were lost, some destroying his gums and being lodged in his skull and the roof of his mouth before others replaced them and he tried again.
But it had no effect, so he switched back and drew his fist behind him before it impacted the bone again and was destroyed. He pummeled it, but more damage was dealt to him than the giant, as fleshless fingers flew out and were discarded and lost. His hand bones splayed out in four directions before reforming moments later, only for them to be mangled again.
Less than a second passed between each hit, but nothing happened to it despite Jean's manic fervor. But when it raised its foot, Jean was dwarfed by it, and when it stepped down on him, he was thrown down through layers and layers of bodies as bones pierced his neck, face, and body. His arms and legs were lost somewhere above him as he lay at the bottom of a pit before being covered in an avalanche of gore as the behemoth's foot lifted up.
And there he lay until the same void as before, that expression of nothing, appeared in front of Jean. Finally possessing his right mind again paralyzed him for some time before his mind began to work again. It only worked slowly at first, but over time, he gradually recovered, and when he recovered fully, he began to understand.
What he first understood was the name of that hell. It was wrath in it purest form. That world's purpose was to accept the universe's wrath and express it. His second realization was that each of the three hells he saw was an aspect of wrath.
The Leviathan's city was the breeding ground of it. It produced it and was its past. Wrath is sourced from iniquity. The plain of Asmodeus, comprised of bones, is the future of wrath: pain and desolation. Wrath only fosters desolation and pain. Upon realizing this, he awoke to M's face again, which was looking at him with bags under his eyes and a hand pinching his nose in frustration.
His brows were furrowed, and he was squinting at Jean, looking more than a little peeved. But M's expression was the least of his problems. He was being kept on a black chair that was leaned back, like a dentist's chair, and his head was kept still by restraints around the crown of his skull. His hands and feet were also cuffed with rough manacles that chafed his skin, which he had to gently try to maneuver his head to see.
Despite noticing his awakening, M remained silent and stared. At a loss for words and afraid he may make the situation worse, Jean remained silent as well and stared back until M decided to speak with a hoarse voice, "Do you know how long I've been here, Jean?"
"Umm, no, no, not really," Jean said, scared. "I don't know where we are." He then allowed his eyes to wander around the room. The black room's walls, ceiling, and floor were made from stone, which was punctuated with blue, red, green, orange, and many other colors from an occasional light source in the form of a bucket of crystals on a table, a fluorescent blue, human-sized tube filled with water, a basin full of a glowing liquid, and more.
"We're in my lab. I do all my experiments here, but I didn't bring you here so that I could experiment on you. I brought you here because I had to."
"W-Why was that?"
His voice rising in anger, M explained, "Because I've had to keep you here for FOUR DAYS without sleep, just trying to keep you alive and away from my family while you screamed and thrashed around. YOU DESTROYED YOUR OWN SKULL, FOR GOODNESS' SAKE! DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD THAT IS TO HEAL?! THE BED WE GAVE YOU IS IN SPLINTERS NOW, AND EVEN THE DOOR WAS DESTROYED WHEN I TRIED TO GET YOU IN HERE!" Reigning it in and calming himself down, M took a deep breath, then another, then another, as Jean sat, terrified.
M had stood up to get a better vantage point to yell at Jean from earlier, but he sat back down after he regained his calm and sighed as he rested his head on his hand in exhaustion. "But I'm not going to do anything for you... I mean, to you," M jumbled his words together before correcting himself. "I don't hold grudges, and it looks like this was unintentional."
Jean saw the light of hope in front of him, as it looked like he would be out of trouble. M continued, "But this isn't normal at all. This is more than just night terrors from war. What's happening? Did you dream or have a vision of some kind? What was it? It's not normal to sleep for four days after sleeping as much as you did unless it's magical of some kind."
"Y-Yeah, I did," Jean was about to explain when a chat screen popped up and warned him not to.
It read, 'We don't know anything about these dreams, and they could be a premonition of something to come. We don't know how he'll react, so we need to keep it to ourselves. We can find out more later, but we need to make sure we're safe first.' After that was another message that gave him a convincing lie to tell instead.
However, remembering what happened last time he lied to M, he refused and told the truth, "I've only slept twice so far, I think, aside from beside that creek, but both times, I've had dreams about..." Red screens popped up, all warnings not to tell the truth. Potestas was completely opposed to it, but Jean continued anyway, "...different hells, I guess. I don't know what else to call them."
"No, that makes sense. Describe them to me."
A red warning read, 'What makes sense? Something's wrong. Make something up or use what I gave you, now, before something goes wrong!'