leaves the now-sleeping Alice to investigate. Astaroth appears to him and tells him he hears the dogs of the mythical Wild Hunt who smell the war that's coming. Astaroth will not say who leads the Hunt but tells Hellboy that Satan has been asleep under his city of Pandemonium for "almost two thousand years now," fated to be killed in his sleep by Hellboy himself when Hellboy goes down to Pandemonium throwing down Satan's princes and generals, and claiming his waiting crown and his father's sword. Astaroth insists that Hellboy will then use his stone right hand to enliven a waiting inanimate army which alone can break the bonds of Hell freeing its denizens to overrun and annihilate the world. As Hellboy battles a reflection of himself, bearing sword and crown, which attacks him from a nearby mirror, Astaroth tells him that if he takes Excalibur (as he must to save the world from Nimue) the act will inevitably lead to him claiming his demon father's sword, and himself destroying the world. His battle with his mirror image concludes with the castle being briefly engulfed in flame, leaving him alone and worrying aloud what has happened to Alice. Hellboy finds Alice's charred remains in her sickroom, where Vasilisa appears to Hellboy to ask him why he didn't take Excalibur. Hellboy explains that he does not trust Morgan le Fay and that, in light of the bloodlust he showed wielding a sword against the giants, he fears what he would do if he took Excalibur. She argues that rather than trusting what he's been told of his world-destroying destiny, he should trust Alice's faith in him and her desire for him to take the sword. He goes back to the sword, and - watched by Vasilisa and Astaroth, and from afar also by Queen Mab and Dagda's old servant, Sir Edward Grey and the witch doctor Mohlomi, the Baba Yaga and her servant Koku, and three witches watching scrying in their cauldron - he pulls the sword easily from the stone, saying "Son of a ..." and suddenly finds himself beside a still-living Alice out on the hillside where they had met Mab, dressed as if nothing had transpired since, save that Hellboy is holding the sword. They embrace, and in her castle Morgan notes the event while reviewing a chessboard populated by white and black skeletons and one red king.