Baalberith: Ah! Here’s your subcircle.

Incognito: Do you mean that there’s an entire subsection of Hell for the sin of messing with the Maiden of the Royal Order?

Baalberith: Well, she is on a mission from God. Anything which disrupts that is like a direct challenge to God — in other words, the sin that caused Lucifer’s Fall.

Besides, there are a whole lot of you guys.

Have a nice eternity!

Incognito: What’s the purpose of the paperwork?

Baalberith: We have to tally up your sins to calculate where in Hell you belong.

Dante was right: you end up in a different circle of Hell depending on your most prevalent sin. Vampires are usually hard to classify; they have so much pride, lust, and violence that it can take decades to add it all up. You, fortunately, were easy, thanks to one small detail.

Incognito: Which was…?

Baalberith: The one sin that takes precedence over all others, no matter how great their magnitude. You got in Integral Hellsing’s way.

I first encountered the concept of Hell as a bureaucracy from Piers Anthony. His Incarnations of Immortality series is another that Helena would recommend.

Incognito: So, are you Satan?

Baalberith: Of course not. I’m just a minor demon.

There are lots of us; there have to be, because we deal with the paperwork.

And Hell is a bureaucracy.

Incognito: Makes sense.

Baalberith: Follow me.

Baalberith: I’ll be finished with your paperwork in a moment; if you have questions, feel free to ask.

Incognito: I’m in Hell, aren’t I?

Baalberith: Yep.

Incognito: So where’s the eternal pain?

Baalberith: You’re a masochist. If we gave you eternal pain, it wouldn’t be Hell, now would it?