A/N: The following is a work of Fanfiction. Castlevania is owned by Konami. Neon Genesis Evangelion is owned by GAINAX, Tatsunoko Production, and their affiliates. Please support the official releases. I claim no ownership of the source materials or garner any compensation from their creation other than the praise of my fans and the thanks of my readers.

"Praise to the Prince of Darkness!"

The congregation of cultists echoed the prayer as Decius Val Theran led them in reverence to their dark god. He stood well over six feet tall, with eyes as black as sackcloth and not a single hair adorning his head. His black priestly robes, a mockery of the catholic monk's uniform, were adorned with silver chains and sigils of darkness.

The room was large; stone adorned all sides of it with relief columns at each corner. The tops of the columns resembled twisted faces in various stages of anguish and all were different. No column was the same as any other in the room, at least not exactly. The floor consisted of flattened cobble but the walkway up the altar was made of stone slabs, each more bloodstained then the last. The walls held paintings of horrid bloody scenes of war and slaughter, impalement being common, and a torch was set on either side of each horrid image. Upon the wall behind the demonic altar was an inverted cross bearing a pair of demonic wings behind it, spread opened as if in flight.

This seemingly medieval gallery served as a sacrificial chamber for the dark gathering that was taking place here. Decius looked over his congregation of cultists with a mix of pride and amusement. Each and every cultist here was a trained killer, deadly summoner, or mage in their own right. Each one was willing to lay down their lives if he but gave the word.

Tonight was the start of something great; it was the beginning of a long ritual that would see the return of the greatest nemesis the world had ever known. Not since the angel wars a year ago had the world seen such evil… and this time it was not a mythic force or alien attacker, it was a doom of their own making. Soon the great castles will rise from the earth again, especially a certain massive fortress citadel hidden within central Europe.

"The time has come my children," Decius continued. "The sacrifice has been found! We will prepare her and she will burn her soul to bring our dark lord back to us! Let the world be bathed in blood and darkness! Everlasting life shall be ours at last!"

The congregation cried out in one voice, "Vlad Dracul! Vlad Dracul!"

As the chanting continued, Decius turned back to the altar, picking up a sacrificial knife. On the altar, a naked girl, no more than 16 squirmed and pulled at her binds, crying in fear. Her medium length black hair was plastered to her neck in sweat. Her Asian eyes wide with fear.

"Your blood is necessary child," Decius whispered to her. "Don't cry, for you will now serve a much nobler purpose… the rise of our lord and master; Vlad Tepes Dracula!"

The girl cried out one last time as the blade was brought high in the air over his head. Her terror palpable as the blade fell…

Archdruid Sephiroth Presents

An Neon Genesis Evangelion x Castlevania Story

Symphony of Shadows: Episode I

Tabula Rasa

I: Who Am I?

Her eyes opened slowly to meet the dim light entering the room. They blinked once, adjusting to the feeling of being awake. Cloth shades hung from the wall around a window to the outside, but the owner of the eyes couldn't tell if the light was of day or a streetlight at night.

Slowly the girl began to sit up and immediately felt a hand helping her to do so.

"Easy," a calming voice softly came. "You've had a bad week so far."

She moaned in pain, feeling as if her body were subjected to being hit from every angle at once. Wondering at how she came to be this way she looked around the room, finding it nondescript but homey in its own way. She tried to think back to what happened to her but…

Nothing… nothing came to her. She thought harder, her heart now beating faster in her chest. She didn't know how she got hurt, she didn't know what she was doing when it happened. Then as she tried to dig even further she realized something else; that despite the familiarity of the boy's voice, she couldn't remember his name. A gasp escaped her as she realized just how blank her mind was.

"Where… where am I?" the girl asked tentatively, hoping some information might jog her memory. She looked at her arm and brushed away her long red hair. That at least seemed familiar and correct to her.

"Um… our apartment," the boy replied confused. "Obviously, you've been here before."

She looked at him and found his face to be familiar and at the same time, foreign to her. He was a young Japanese male, probably around 16 years old or so with unusually bright cobalt eyes and a very gentle touch. The way he was touching her now, it was as if he was afraid he would hurt her. She decided immediately that she liked him and wondered if they were a couple.

"Everything is so fuzzy," she admitted.

"It took me a week to find you. And then… I finally found you in an alley as if you had been discarded. I haven't really looked you over… um… I figured you wouldn't want me doing that."

She immediately understood what he was implying and nodded once. Perhaps they were not together after all, a thought which sadden her a little. "I am in pain but it is nothing I cannot handle."

"Why are you talking like Rei?" the boy asked her directly. The name wasn't even familiar to her but something tugged at the end of her mind like she should know who that was.

"I am sorry," the girl replied. "I do not remember anything."

"Anything?" the boy asked with nervousness in his voice.

She nodded, realizing he was now starting to understand her problem. "I do not even know your name… or mine."

"You have amnesia," the boy noted. "I can't even begin to imagine what happened to you." He paused. "My name is Ikari Shinji." She noted he used the normal surname first format usually used by the Japanese. She knew at least she was in Japan, or could at least safely assume as much. "Your name is Sohryu Asuka Langley."

"I have two surnames?" she asked with interest. The name seemed familiar, and she recognized the fact that her first name was in the middle of what this boy, this Shinji had said.

"You were always keen to assert the fact that you were only half Japanese," he replied evenly.

"I see," Asuka replied. "I wish I remember any of this."

"Perhaps it will come back to you in time," Shinji replied. "For now, I would just try to rest. I don't think you've had enough time to recover from your injuries. I haven't reported to NERV that you've been located yet."

"NERV?"

"Where we work. We're, ah, Security Operatives now. We used to pilot these… well…" He paused causing her to look at him with an even more puzzled expression. "Ah… well it really doesn't matter right now. Besides, I'm not even sure if you would believe me if I told you."

"I see." Asuka replied. She shifted a bit and immediately felt a bit on the grungy side. "Can you wash these sheets and perhaps find me some clean clothes. I need a wash badly," she admitted.

"Oh! Um… of course!" He stood up from the bed allowing her to get up. She looked at herself and saw she was wearing some rather dirty and nasty looking clothes.

"I look like a vagrant," she admitted. "Yes, a good washing is definitely in order." As she walked towards the bathroom door she stripped off the shirt, tossing it aside. She heard Shinji gulp as she wore no bra beneath the dirty shirt. "You should dispose of these clothes," she continued as she stripped and slipped out of the rest without facing him and entered into the bathroom. Judging from the sounds he made, she wondered if she gave the poor boy a nosebleed.

With the door closed she looked at herself and saw in addition to all the grime, she had several wounds on her chest and stomach, all perfectly mirrored on each side of her. One lay above each breast, four on her stomach in almost a perfect box pattern and one in each shoulder. She looked down, seeing she probably needed a shave on top of everything else and noted more scars on her thighs. Though they didn't hurt at all, she cringed anyway wondering what they were and how she got them.

Turning the water on she made sure it was nice and hot before stepping in. Inside he saw the boy's shampoo and body wash, but also saw more feminine products as well; a feminine shaving razor, cherry blossom scented shampoo and conditioner, facial wash and all the proper scrubbing items needed for all of these activities. She reached down and took the razor in her hand, noting the familiar feel of it. She looked at the razor blades and carefully inspected those, finding a single hair lodged between two of the blades. Carefully removing it she noted it was red like hers.

"So we live together, but we are not a couple?" she asked herself. His reaction to seeing the back side of her naked seemed to indicate he was not used to seeing her in such a state of undress so if they really were living with each other it was further evidence that it was out of necessity or convenience rather than because they were a couple. This also explained why he thought it would be inappropriate for him to examine her too closely.

Again she sighed sadly, wondering if she had always hoped they would get together. Her faint emotions where all she could really go off of now. Her instincts knew she was meant to be here, her emotions indicated this to be true, but why weren't they together?

And why was her stuff in his bathroom, did she not have her own? More and more questions continued to pile onto her until she finally decided the only way she was going to get her memory back was to stop second guessing and start accepting her current situation. She would try to get back into her life no matter what it took. Perhaps this time, she could do the things her predecessor could not.

"Predecessor?" she whispered. "Can a lack of memory truly make me a completely different person?" She mused on this as she washed up.

After taking a long hot shower which included shaving everything that needed it, including places most Japanese girls normally don't shave, she finally got out feeling refreshed. Her scars she noted, now that they were cleaner looked at lot less horrific than before. She covered her hair in a towel and twirled it up to dry it, catching sight of something on her shoulder blade when she did so. Turning a bit more she managed to see it in its full glory.

It was a tattoo, but it wasn't one that most people would have there. Instead it appeared to be some kind of circle with glyphic symbols. An outer circle and another one a short distance within the first outlined the entire tattoo. Inside the space between the circles was a ring of sigils and symbols that followed the circle around. She noted it was a perfect circle, something that would have had to have been meticulously drawn upon her. Only three symbols within each ring held any kind of coloration, the others seemed to be mere outlines.

As she continued to turn, she saw the inner circle consisting of some kind of glyphic symbol. It was enormously complex, and reminded her of occult symbols. Then she noted the massive one on her back a little lower and another one similar to the first on her other shoulder blade.

"What... what is all of this?" she questioned to no one watching as it almost looked as if the symbols glowed for a moment. A flash of an image entered her mind. Briefly, she saw a dark gathering, saw herself naked and tied face down on an altar. She felt cold hands on her back and then pain; it felt as if a searing hot needle was being pushed into her flesh.

But just as she tried to grasp such a horrid thread, her mind rejected it out of abject terror. The memory evaporated becoming hard to completely recall, leaving only her rapidly beating heart as a reminder of what she saw.

"Mein Gott…what happened to me?"

Asuka decided not to mention the tattoos on her back, after all Shinji must have seen them when she stripped her shirt off on her way into the bathroom, and he probably would mention something if they were out of place. And yet… that vision she received ever so briefly in the bathroom was not encouraging to her.

Food was laid out for her as she walked into what she assumed with the kitchen. A small table with two chairs adorned the shortened wall between the two doors leading out into the living room. Asuka sat down on one of the chairs then moved to the other as she realized it didn't 'feel right' to her.

The food laid out was definitely not Japanese fare; Bratwursts and Sauerkraut, a bowl of what appeared and smelled to be a wine cheese sauce, and a larger bowl holding several artisan style hoagie rolls. She picked a brat up with her fork placing it in the roll before smoothing it with cheese and kraut. The taste as she took her first bite was very familiar and lit her taste buds up in ways she enjoyed.

"It's one of your favorites," Shinji noted. "I've acquired a bit of a taste for it as well."

"It is perfect," Asuka commented after she swallowed. "Danke."

"Es war mir ein Vergnügen," Shinji replied in very uncertain German.

Asuka felt slight amusement. His accent wasn't very good, but he knew German. He probably learned it for her, though obviously they didn't use it much.

"I've been practicing," Shinji affirmed, looking sheepish, thinking he said it wrong.

"Have you been doing that for me?" She asked playfully, then giggled as she watched him blush sheepishly. "Sorry, I could not help it."

"It's okay… it's what you would do."

Asuka smiled softly at those words. She may have none of memory back yet, but certain things seem to be falling into place on their own. But then, a slight burning sensation on her back reminded her that her life was in fact inverted and disrupted in a big way, and she needed to get to the bottom of it. She thought back to the image but again, trying to recall it made it harder to do so, like something was actively trying to block that memory from her.

"Asuka?" Shinji asked with a mote of concern in his voice. She realized she must have been expressing her ill ease as she tried to remember again… or perhaps it was because she had to stop shoving food into her mouth to do so.

"Shinji-kun," she whispered as she looked up to him; her face an expression of worry and concern. She told herself she wouldn't ask such question but they begged answers, and she had plenty of indication now that those marks on her back weren't supposed to be there. "Did… I mean… have you… eh…" She really didn't know how to breach the subject. She didn't want to scare him off with talk about her bare skin since she already established he was a bit sheltered in that regard.

"What is it?" he coaxed.

"Other than earlier today, have you ever seen my back exposed like that?"

The boy did blush a little and seemed a bit uncomfortable but he nodded. "A couple of times, actually... Once shortly after we met, and once after we had been working together a lot."

"Did I… Did I have any tattoos there that you knew about?"

Shinji visibly sighed and put his food down. He appeared to be taking a moment to collect his thoughts before he answered, and Asuka was hoping the wait would not be long. The answer was what she wasn't hoping for at all.

"No," Shinji whispered. "Both times I saw your back it was clean, unblemished, unadorned… perfect." As if realizing how that last part sounded he suddenly backpedaled. "I mean… uh… like no scars or anything like that!"

Under normal circumstances, such a thing probably would have amused her, but in this case…

"You saw my back before I went into the bathroom, ja?"

"Yes."

"And?"

He paused before he finally spoke. "I don't know where or when you got those weird circles tattooed on your back. I thought it was weird because they seem like they could be occult or something, and last I checked, you weren't into that sort of thing. But the people we were fighting…"

"What people?" Asuka leaned forward. "What were we doing? What was I doing?"

Shinji sighed and stood up, walking towards the kitchen window. Asuka could see it was roughly sundown. She still didn't know just how long it had been since she went missing.

"You and I work for NERV. About a year ago, the original purpose of NERV was quite different than it is now, but I won't go into that because for one, I don't think you'd believe me, and two it doesn't have any relevance to what we do now. My father still runs the organization, and it's an internal security branch of the Japanese Special Self Defense Force, or JSSDF for short. We have been working like this for the past year, since the end of NERV's original mission."

He paused and looked at her. Asuka nodded to indicate that she understood so far. He turned back towards the window.

"This time we were investigating a disturbance in the Upper Canto district of Tokyo-2. We found we were against some kind of cult. Our intelligence didn't indicate anything like this, and they were pretty well armed for a cult. During the exchange there was an explosion, and you went MIA. Some of the other operatives that were debriefed mentioned monsters and that some of the cult members were simply shouting weird words and making things happen as if by magic. I saw no such thing during that incident."

"I see," Asuka replied. "None of this is ringing any bells."

"I'm more surprised the idea of magic isn't getting you even more skeptical about this," Shinji noted. "You're a Physics Major; I'd have though the mere notion of magic would be appalling or something."

"I get the feeling I have seen even more incredible things in my life," Asuka responded and noted Shinji's slight nod at her statement. "So it is highly probable that I was captured by this cult."

"Is any of this making any sense at all?"

"A little," Asuka noted nervously. She pulled her knees to her chest wrapping her arms around her legs to hold them there as Shinji looked on with a look of concern. "There is a memory I got a flash of when I first saw the sigils on my back. But it is hard to pull at that thread, as if my mind is trying to block it out because it is too horrible to witness."

Shinji approached her. "Asuka," he whispered.

"I am in some kind of stone room. I can hear chanting. I feel a burning hot needle being pushed into my back." She felt a tear leaving her eye and chose not to fight it. As soon as Shinji came close to her chair, she unfolded herself and pulled him to her, resting her head against his stomach and wrapping her arms around his waist and lower back. Shinji froze, almost predictably.

"A-Asuka… I…"

"Please," she whispered pathetically. "Please just hold me and tell me I am going to be okay." She needed him now, and she didn't care if they were not a couple. Asuka knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, despite not having a single memory to confirm it, that she was in love with the boy, that she trusted her entire being to him… and most of all that she absolutely needed him now more than ever.

Shinji sighed audibly but she felt his arms encircle her. Allowing herself to cry softly, she vented the frustration and pain of being nothing at all but a broken, empty shell. If this was her fate, she would make Shinji her only foundation, and hopefully with any luck begin to rebuild her life. After all, she had the distinct feeling that he was the one who would always find her if she fell….

At some point Asuka managed to pull herself together long enough to dry her tears, drink some soothing tea Shinji had brewed for her, and drift off to sleep in her own room. Barely even awake enough to look around, at the room at that time, she didn't see anything that jogged her memory in the least. She wondered if anything would now.

Asuka slept for a few hours before another event would interrupt her life. Hearing the sound of pounding on the apartment door, she sat upright in her bed. Her heart pounding as the door was kicked in. Asuka however, being trained for this sort of thing quickly moved out of bed and against the wall by the door to her room, listening. She was dressed only in panties and a large T-Shirt but that didn't concern her at that moment. As far as she was concerned, the people who dared break into the home of an operative of NERV wouldn't live long enough to enjoy the sight of her barely clothed.

"Find the candidate!" ordered one of the men. Judging from the footsteps there were at least 3 to 5 individuals that were in the apartment. As her door was slid opened Asuka grabbed the man proceeded to beat him down with a quick series of attacks kicking him out of the room against the wall in view of the others who stopped what they were doing at that moment.

As the man tried to get off the wall Asuka kicked him in the throat holding her foot down on his neck after impact and pinning him to the wall. He struggled as his larynx was crushed and he quickly suffocated to death. Asuka turned and viewed the other intruders with disdain.

"Get out of my apartment," she demanded.

"It's the sacrifice!" the leader exclaimed. "Excellent! Lord Decius will be pleased! Take her!" The others responded, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she just easily killed one of their own. Asuka readied herself for combat just as one of the men completed a phrase of power. A black hole of energy opened on the ground before him and three humanoid skeletons popped out of the hole.

"Oh Scheiße," she exclaimed as she saw the boney assailants form large bones in their hands. Then something welled up inside of her. They were after someone else, a candidate she realized. They referred to her as 'the sacrifice' so she wasn't the candidate, and there was only one other person in the apartment. 'Oh, hell no. I will not let them take him!'

Runes within the circles on her shoulder blades began to glow, and they would be visible even through the shirt. Two of the skeletons rushed forward ready to strike but it was too late.

"Zur Hölle mit dir!" she shouted as she threw both of her hands forward with opened palms as if initiate a flat handed strike to their skulls. A blade seemed to fire out of each palm punching through the skulls of both simultaneously causing their bodies to shatter as the power that held them together was extinguished. The upper back of Asuka's T-shirt blew opened revealing her glowing glyphs and the single glowing symbol on the outer ring of each that resembled a rapier faintly. The third skeleton rushed her as his buddies fell to dust, and the glowing rune on Asuka's right shoulder changed. It stopped glowing, but a sword-shaped one near it began to glow instead. With a swing of her hand Asuka felt the power well up in her again, and a physical sword appeared in that hand. She easily decapitated the second skeleton before shifting her left rune to a sword as well, forming a second one. Another of the three mages produced a bolt of electrical force but Asuka easily dodged it sliding in quickly and slashing the man's midsection opened with little delay.

The summoner quickly tried to pull out another minion but was interrupted and had to block the incoming attacks from Asuka. The third mage tried to circle around but Asuka proved she could fend off attacks from both sides quite easily. The leader stood back watching in what appeared to be mute horror as Asuka's blade dance easily made quick work of the summoner.

The other mage tried desperately to land a blow but was brought down quickly with a series of quick strikes aimed as his wrists and arms. As his weapons fell limply and he cried in pain Asuka used both blades to decapitate the man in a cross slash. Having apparently seen enough, the leader attempted to flee, running for the door. Suddenly a dagger slammed into the door just past his head.

"Where are you going?" Asuka deadpanned. "I have many questions for you, cultist."

The last mage drew a short blade that appeared to be crafted of black glass. "I will stop you and bring you to Master Decius!" With a war cry, he launched forward. Asuka switched her left hand blade to a reverse grip and used her forearm with the blade along it to stop the attack, then ran the man though the stomach with the other blade.

"Why do you want us so badly!" she yelled at the gasping man as she pushed the blade deeper into his gut. His response was to laugh in her face.

"You will know soon enough, child," he spoke as blood began to trail from his mouth. "Lord Decius will have both of you yet, and then… and… then…" Blood poured from his mouth and he finally fell dead, sliding off of Asuka's blade as he did so. Asuka lost concentration on her weapons at that moment and both blades simply dematerialized as if they were never there.

She looked at her hands, felt the cool air against her bare back as she realized only the undamaged collar of her T-shirt was holding it in place. In mute horror, she looked at the death she caused with weapons she conjured from nowhere at all.

"Was bin ich," she whispered softly as she looked at her hands.

"A weapon," Shinji replied softly as he stepped out of the shadows with a Mineba P-9 in his right hand. "At least that what it looked like from here."

"They called me 'the sacrifice'. They called you 'the candidate'. What in Gott's name is going on here, Shinji-kun?"

"I don't know," Shinji replied looking away. "Whatever it is, we've become a part of it. And we can't stay here."

"And where are we supposed to go now?" Asuka challenged as she felt her heart racing at the realization of how deep in the shit they both were at that moment.

"I have a safe house," he offered. "We can go there. I doubt even the cult will be able to find us there."

Asuka nodded. Shinji thought ahead it seemed, though she was sure that he never imagined a situation like this would have prompted them to use it.

They wasted no time gathering a few important items before loading into Shinji's SUV and leaving Tokyo-2.

"Will you not be missed?" Asuka asked as they hit the main highway out of the city.

"Father always seems to know where I am," Shinji replied. "He'll know not to expect me in to work anytime soon."

"If that is true, then why has he not tried to reacquire me as well?" Asuka asked, not understanding how this was even possible. "Would he not already know that you found me?"

"I've been asking myself the same question," Shinji admitted. "And I've come up with two possibilities. Either my father knows enough about the situation to trust my decision making and is letting me handle it… or he doesn't give a shit and is just watching how it all plays out."

"And which do you think it the more likely of the two?" she asked.

Shinji's silence was all she needed to hear to know what he really thought. She had gotten the sense that Gendo Ikari was less than amiable in his mannerisms and such, but she wondered just what made him such an unrelenting douchebag to his son. Certainly she had been privy to most of it during the time before they were both operatives, likely during this time they were 'pilots'.

Asuka looked out the window as rain began to fall. It would get cold tonight, and she mused that the chill feeling running though her veins right now would likely be echoed by the weather…

Sitting in the dark I can't forget,

Even now I realize the time I'll never get

Another story of the bitter pills of fate,

I can't go back again

I can't go back again

"I wish I had more of my memories. The safe house is nice, and it is a lovely area, but now I am haunted by nightmares. Perhaps taking a walk in the wilderness will help clear my head… but what is with this weird cave?"

Next Chapter: Nightmares