the storm now ravaging Britain will eventually spread over the whole world, leaving it ruled by monsters until (as seen in BPRD: King of Fear), "it all burns." Then, she insists gratefully, a new world will rise. Hellboy cannot win trying to save the world: "This world's run its course, but it's not that it goes -- it's how it goes." The Dragon having escaped its prison early, "Hellboy fights to buy this world a little more time... time enough for his friends [pictured as BPRD's Abe Sapien, Liz Sherman, and Roger the Homunculus] to do what they must ... so when the new world comes, at least the spirit of man will survive." As a protesting Alice reaches the foot of the tower, she passes Sir Edward Grey, who tells her to hurry. At the tower top, still pinned by the exulting dragon's claw, Hellboy sees Vasilisa, the girl from Russian folklore who had helped him in Darkness Calls and advised him in The Wild Hunt. She is holding the last of the live ravens from Nimue's helmet. She asks Hellboy how he feels and he confirms that as she had told him, dying doesn't hurt. Crying, she asks him if he's ready and he says "I guess so." She turns the raven back into an iron sword with a bird's head ornament similar to that adorning Ohlomi's staff from Hellboy: The Third Wish. Hellboy takes the sword and as his blood runs down it, it turns to gold. Then he slices half through the Dragon's leg. Alice cowers on the stairs outside the room as the Dragon convulses and Hellboy clings to it using his stone right hand while he releases streams of muddy golden blood from the Dragon's belly with the other. When Hellboy climbs a bit higher and stabs the Dragon's chest, he releases a gout of flame, and sends the Dragon's body collapsing lifelessly onto the tower. As Alice rushes into the room and Hellboy quips about the day he's had, Nimue's spirit emerges from Dragon's chest and uses her final moments to kill Hellboy by ripping out his heart before being dragged in Hell by the ghosts of England's drowned witches. Hellboy's gun-belt sits in a pile of dust (his stone hand is not in frame) and the red piece on Morgan's disordered chess board (over which Death stands watching) is rubble. Alice opens