Velveteen -- Replay
Disclaimer: Devil May Cry and associating characters and locations belong to Capcom games. Not us, Capcom. Got it? Good.
A/N: Sorry for the horrifying shortness of this first installment of the new version, Velveteen – Replay. It was originally written in a forum and looked much longer than this. Trust us. Well, since this one was more popular than the original Velveteen, we decided to cut production on the original and continue with this one. Sorry if we have inconvenienced anyone. Thank you. Maizoon I'Ren and Company.
Prologue
He sat on the wall, watching the patrolling patterns of the gracefully awkward creatures that wandered the grounds, their disturbingly thin and tall figures silhouetted against the blood red sky of dusk. What had they been called? Stiltwalkers?
The hunter grimaced slightly. According to the information given him, the monstrous house on the grounds was guarded on the outside by these things.
They each rose to a massive height of approximately fourteen and a half feet. Their stick-thin charcoal-colored bodies were as such that they could make an anorexic cry in envy; one could wrap their hands about the creatures' middles at least twice. They looked like some deranged artist's wire sculpture come to life by a god-like figure with a sick sense of humor. Upon their elongated oval-shaped heads were set a pair of monstrous eyes, seemingly too big for their faces and glowing red-orange in color. They had no definite hands or feet, looking like they were merely walking on the points their legs ended in. For their disproportionate forms, they moved with a sort of disturbing grace and speed. Despite their mild appearance, however, the beasts were nasty. When anyone touched the ground in their territory, they would come to them with the intent of feeding. Stiltwalkers were carnivorous spirits, not even having the kindness to kill their prey first before rending it to pieces. There were small woodland creatures during his time there that Dante had learned that from.
Anyone who came to these cursed and possessed grounds was safe outside the walls of the property, but once that person stepped within the boundaries of the place, they were pretty much done for. The Stiltwalkers were trained to come after any living thing that stepped within those high walls made of black stone, and the ground heaved up after anything that stepped on it. The gold and red marble porch a good quarter mile from the property line was the safe house and Dante had sat there for a good three and a half hours trying to figure out the quickest and most productive way to make it to that porch, perched precariously in a crouching position on the wall. After all, life wasn't worth living if he couldn't announce his presence with a bang, hm?
One other thing filtered through his mind; his reasons for wanting into the eight-story stronghold in the middle of a grey writhing moat. Someone wanted Future's crystal ball and they were paying him a damn good price for his services in retrieving the object.
Now, normally Dante was unfazed by confronting Death in all its forms since he did that normally. But looking out at the immense manor somehow made him subconsciously nervous. During his surveillance, there were times when the foreboding sense of being in a black corner with no way out had overtaken him. There was something inhabiting that structure that could send the bad shivers flying up the white-haired hunter's back, and he didn't like it. Not at all. The client that wanted the crystal ball of the Fate of the Future had told him that they couldn't make it into the manor on their own for the mere appearance of the place frightened them into submission. Dante could see why.
Thankfully, he had seen many a place like this, so the look of it didn't even click as frightening in his mind. Just the stereotypical hang-out for his least favorite creature, but his favorite prey; demons.
It was an immense structure, made of the same stone as the property walls and rising a whopping nine stories (including the attic) into the air. If one stood on the porch centered in front of it, you could not see from one corner to the next. The windows were made in the Gothic Era style as thin slits curving at the tops to make the points. Set into the wall behind the uncovered porch was a pair of dual mahogany doors about eight feet in height with the same lines as the windows. The entire stoop was lit with two old-fashioned oil carriage lamps hanging about eye level to a man of average height. Along the wall on the left side of the doors was a monstrous stained glass window, though thin for its size, depicting a golden-haired white-skinned woman on a dark blue background holding in her outstretched hands the world, a flock of angels rising from the bottom to encircle her. On the opposite side of the doors was another stained glass window of the same size, this one depicting an immense Shadow Beast-like figure on a dark red background, flanked by little gremlins and demons. Dante understood those two pictures from old books and the like on his travels; Gaia was the woman, a Goddess of Light and Life, supposedly, whilst the Black God on the opposing side of the doors was Chaos, God of All and Nothing. What he did not get was the stained glass wheel window above the doors. It, too, was massive, depicting the Grim Reaper of olden times -- a skeletal figure in a shredded robe -- with a monstrous scythe in its clutches. The blade curled under the figure, dripping something (most likely blood) onto the open bloom of a rose. The rose was attached to a vine that curled in a circle around the figure, the thorns on the vine shaped in such a way, they looked like runes. The background of this was done in gold, the outline of the focal point in the deepest most profound shade of red.
Finally, the sun went down, enveloping the last of the blood red sky in a deep rich blue near the horizon, black studded with white pin pricks everywhere else. The moon peeked timidly from behind a bank of clouds, casting a faint silver-white glow over the landscape. Dante's startlingly blue eyes looked to the manor's property before him, catching the blurry figures of the Stiltwalkers suddenly disappearing around the corners of the manor. Probably changing out the guard ... which meant that this short period of nothing was the devil hunter's cue to start now for the structure.
His legs, bent at the knees to accommodate his lithe frame, shot straight out, sending him flying through the air parallel to the ground. After three seconds of staying aloft, he tucked his body in, rolled once, and came to land on the ground a quarter from his target. The rumors were true; that was easily proved for as soon as he touched the ground, he bounced immediately back up, taking note of where he had touched down, the ground rippled like water in a disturbed lake then reared up in a long tendril, the vibrant colors of the grass muted significantly. The tip of the newly grown appendage bent at a ninety degree angle to the rest of its bulk, the rounded top splitting down the middle to show a great red eye with a black iris and a white pupil. The iris and pupil darted around before narrowing in on the intruder, still in mid-air from his last jump. As the strange creature confirmed the existence of an unwanted visitor, it gave a mournful moaning sound and began after him, raising the lawn in front of its target in a wall to stop him.
The instant the ground blockaded his path, Dante's face split into a grin, his hands flying into his coat to unhook the dual pistols from their holsters. The barrels were aimed -- Ivory at the great red eye, Ebony at the main wall --, his stance changing slightly.
"Well now. Looks like that new fertilizer's doing the trick."
Naturally, he couldn't fire off a couple of rounds without saying something. As soon as the last few syllables passed his lips, both the triggers of the massive guns were pulled in rapid simultaneous succession. The bullets hit their marks, as expected. There was no blood spatter, but the creature did give out a loud human-like screech before the eye closed and the barricade was lowered. Though the first threat had been eradicated, there were still others and so neither of the pistols were put back. Not yet.
It was a good call to keep Ebony and Ivory out. The earthen wall was beginning to drop and was soon low enough Dante could use it to get some good leverage for the next trip across the lawn before he had to touch the ground again. The moon had become brave, it seemed, in that amount of time from the hunter's first move to now, the silvery light cascading from the full sphere like daylight, casting odd fluctuating white shadows on the fluttering red coat donned by the half-demon.
The cries of the falling earth guardian had been met by a series of unnerving cooing noises from the other guards; the Stiltwalkers were coming back and it sounded like it wasn't just the night shift coming to greet the newcomer but the entire pack of them. Sure enough, as soon as Dante hit the ground on the ball of his right foot and launched himself back into the air, the full population of the creatures had managed somehow to congregate at the last place he touched down at. By their confused looks and questioning noises, he realized it then.
They can only see me when I'm touching the ground...
As if to test this theory, he changed his stance during the flight and came to land sooner than expected, landing on the head and a shoulder of one of the nearest Stiltwalkers to his position. The beast gave an ear-splitting blood-curdling screech and soon all of the others were attacking the one with the intruder on it.
Alright; the ground and them. he concluded, bounding away from the one now being mauled.
They never really killed their comrade, just banged it up a bit and went looking for this elusive newcomer. It was hard to keep track of something like him; Dante touched only the guardians when he had to, bouncing off the backs of their disturbing heads long enough to push himself back airborne. He had learned his lesson with lingering and only stayed on any one of the creatures long enough to make it give a 'Mreep?' noise of confusion. Once riled, the Stiltwalkers were very vocal.
Unfortunately for him, he did not foresee the dilemma that came next. Approximately two hundred feet from the porch, one of the creatures he was aiming for moved at the last second and he ended up touching the ground in the center of the pack. They were on him in a heartbeat, wasting no time in attempting to remove him in pieces.
For a split moment, it looked as if it might have been the end finally of the intruder's trek toward the manor. Tables turned however as the roar of gunshots echoed passed the deranged cooing of the Stiltwalkers, who proved ready to rend the flesh from bone, their pointed chins splitting into massive chasms with little pointed teeth inside. Shortly after the first loud bangs were heard, a small portion of the monsters on the inside of the pile screamed and collapsed until there was a suitable hole for the devil hunter to squeeze through and away, keeping the beasts at bay by dispatching them when they came too close. Amazingly, he managed to remain unscathed from that whole ordeal save a few small scratches along one cheek.
"Damn monsters..." he grumbled under his breath before taking aim for a pair of Stiltwalkers that came far too close for comfort."Down, boys! ...Girls ... Whatever!"
He managed only to fire one shot; he had been paying more attention to the advancing guard then the porch, which snuck up on him and caught his heel. He stumbled, then tripped, and caught his balance on the upraised marble stoop, watching as the remaining pack of creatures stopped dead and looked around, once more vocalizing their confusion. Their chins finally melded back together, hiding their monstrous maws, and soon the fallen rose back up and the pattern of guards started all over again.
Dante did not move from his spot for a few moments, the gaping maws of his faithful guns still pointed out toward the Stiltwalkers as they went about. A few more seconds passed before he felt comfortable enough to actually return the guns to their designated cradles and lock them back in place. Once done and his body checked for any significant wounds (nothing too serious and the scratches had healed fairly quickly), he was done. A smudge had appeared on the hem of his brilliant red coat, but that was quickly remedied and he was on toward the front doors.
They were lovely doors, rising in the traditional pointed arch of old castle fortresses. The lamps on either side of the doors made them shine with something almost as unearthly as the very air that surrounding the entire property. Carved into the left mahogany door was the figure of a woman, clad in a long dress and a cloak with her long hair flying about her. The border for the carving was a falling of roses, the craftsmanship of it expert. About the woman's form was wrapped a massive amount of great chains, which led to the picture on the other door; a monstrous scythe, covered in the same chains that surrounded the other carving's figure. This one sat amidst a bramble of thorns. Sitting at chest level in the center of both doors was a brass knocker, monstrous in size, but amazingly light in weight. Set above the doors into the stone face was a massive bronze plaque, reading 'Rising Sun'.
There were no definite knobs on either of the portals, so he ended up lifting one of the great metal rings (it was much easier than he thought; he lifted it with one hand as though it were a pillow) and letting it crash against the plate under it at the curve. There was a great booming noise, like thunder, which echoed throughout the insides of the house, the grand front doors doing nothing to muffle the sound. When the sound had faded to almost nothing, there came a new sound; chains rattling, creaking, and straining. A series of loud clicks issued from behind the door, then a louder squeal rose as the doors were pulled slowly open. Once the crack between the two had been opened enough, he strode into the front foyer of the place. He had gone not twenty feet into the room when the doors slammed shut with a thunderous bang and locked behind him, casting the entire room in pitch black darkness. Slowly, gingerly, a dim orange glow emitted from points about his surroundings, eventually bringing the chamber he stood in into light.
It was massive, deceptively so. Lit by dimmed lanterns, the cavernous hall was made of white and grey stone. The ceiling reminded the hunter of a cathedral, the way it flew aloft above his head, supported by a series of white marble pillars carved in the shapes of frightening beasts of old, all twisted in what looked to be anguish. The floor was a grand stone mosaic of the same picture that was depicted on the wheel window above the front doors. Centered above the reaper's head was a fountain made of red stones, pouring clean clear water and filling the chamber with the scent and sound of fresh water, though he noticed there was no sound and that the foyer was sinisterly silent. Surrounding the pool of the fountain was a small set of stone benches. Doors of all shapes and sizes surrounded the room, peering around the pillars from the walls like timid mice with a cat lurking nearby.
Dante strode into the center of the room ... and stepped on something that crunched underfoot. He looked down to where he had stepped to discover a patch of small black roses he had not noticed, the bushel growing out of the ground in the right eye socket of the skeletal face on the mosaic reaper. He took a small step back and was bending down to inspect the small cluster of the black buds when the silence of the room was broken with a small click. He looked up from the floor to notice a small section on the far wall popping open, creating a black rectangle to appear in the pale silvery wall. It was about the right size to fit someone of a smaller stature than he, but it was not too small that he could not duck his way into it. However, the sudden appearance of such a portal was ... suspiciously familiar. Hadn't things like this popped out of nowhere and always led to bad things happening?
The devil hunter rose to his feet and strode forward, looking through the doorway. Nothing but darkness, though the light from the cavernous chamber behind him showed that there was a series of crudely carved earthen stairs leading down into that inky blackness.
"Man!" he murmured to himself. "What a convenient doorway! Couldn't possibly be a trap. Nope. Not at all."
Barely a second went by before he decided to walk across the threshold, knowing somewhere deep within his gut full well that this was the way to go. Once he was fully passed the wall and about six steps away from the doorway, the wall closed up behind him once more, casting him and the way he was to go in complete darkness. He stopped dead, not wanting to go any further until his eyes adjusted to the blackness that surrounded him when a series of torches sprung suddenly to life, lighting the stairs in front of the one descending into the bowels of the manor.
Around curves and across seemingly bottomless chasms, the stairs took Dante deeper. Finally, when the thought that he could take no more of the damn stairs crossed his mind and he contemplated going back, the end grew from around that last corner and he stepped down onto it. The way the basement was set up, he thought of an Indiana Jones flick, with the brave and trusty hero barreling through the caves without second thought to get to the treasure at the end.
"Either someone has a stick up their ass or they really like those old movies." he said to no one in particular and in the end decided he was talking to himself with a mild shrug of his shoulders.
The stairs, much to his chagrin, ended in a narrow corridor that seemed to carry on forever. However, his instinct kept telling him to continue forward, that the target he sought was just ahead, and so he went anyway. Again, the path wound about itself and continued on downward until he was sure he was either going to be nauseous or he was going to hunt down the contractor of the place and kick his ass. Thankfully, the closed in tunnel ended sooner than the stairs did, though it ended before another flight of them that was blessedly shorter than the first.
The room at the end of the tunnel was the stereotypical cave in the beginning, yet hollowed out into a cathedral near the back. Those same disturbing pillars held the domed ceiling above the floor, looking down at the room with great cold eyes. Small lanterns were hung from the ceiling in a spiral pattern, the highest lantern set in the middle of the spiral. The floors were polished pink marble, a half-circle-shaped plateau rising two and a half feet above the floor itself made of the same silver marble that lined the walls in the entry hall. Three stairs were set in front of the pedestal, leading up to it. There was a massive rectangle made of ebony set into the wall behind the pedestal, seven silver plaques well-cared for shimmering with a strange iridescence from the ebony face.
Down the last flight of stairs Dante descended, touching down and striding across the ground to the upraised floor on the opposite side of the room. As soon as he passed the dirt and stepped onto the marble from between two pillars, he stopped dead, his hands moving immediately for his pistols. They froze right above the stocks, not moving any further when he realized the figure resting upon the plateau's top against the ebony wall was either dead to the world asleep or just plain dead.
Not much was seen of the other's countenance, for their face was turned to the floor. By the way their body was shaped, however, one could guess it was either a woman or a man who was very curvaceous and enjoyed the wearing of dresses. Dante would take the former guess, for upon his cautious approach of the figure, he could see the slopes of her breasts through the black silk of the one-piece dress that covered her body, though she lied upon her front. Sprouting from the woman's head was a crown of fine raven black hair, the long waves spilt about and covered most of her down-turned visage and shoulders. Her right arm and hand were tucked under her body, but the left were out in plain sight. The exposed limb, covered from her shoulders to her wrist where the point of the sleeve connected to her middle finger, was long and slender and ended in a doll-like hand covered with the whitest flesh he had ever come across. Her fingers were long, made for playing a harp or a piano, and tipping the ends of them were fingernails. No. Not fingernails. These were more like claws, two inches in length and filed to a point, the points resting on the marble floor under her, her fingers barely curled. Other than that, there was nothing more to see of her; the dress with the torn and fraying bottom hem covered her body quite well. Though he could not see nor hear any breath coming from her, he knew better than to check and see if she was actually dead, and so he merely stayed alert around the being and made his way to the wall with the plaques set in it.
The way the set of seven were set up was with two set on the top row about six inches above the top of Dante's head, a second row of four directly under that at about eye level with him, and a third and final row of just one set at his waist level. By the last names of the people named by them, it was easy to guess that they were a family, dead and buried and this woman nearby was their guardian and caretaker.
"So much for that, then..." he muttered, his voice trailing as the sounds of shuffling arose around him, causing him to look about. It had sounded like silk moving against itself, but the only other one in the room with him that he could see easily was in the same position he last saw her in. A little more cautious, he returned to examining the wall.
The first two showed the names of a man and a woman with the letters of each not engraved but melded in copper; Ivan and Taniya Telikov, Ivan on the left and Taniya on the right. The next row down showed three males and a female actually engraved, in order from the left as Christoph, Christian, Theodore, and Vidanya Telikov. The lone plaque at the very bottom read a single female name that was not only engraved, but lined in a brilliant plating of gold; Miska Telikov.
He ran the tips of his gloved fingers over the names, starting with Miska's. For some odd reason, he lingered longest on hers, feeling a certain attachment to this dead girl he had never known. Once done with her name, he lifted his hand to simply run the flat palm over the others' plaques, continuing with Vidanya's next and running backward from there. There was something about this probably long-since deceased family that he felt attracted to, something in the way they felt against his hand, something that told him this would be his tribute to them, to just remember their names.
Save for Ivan.
Upon lifting his hand from Taniya's plaque, Dante's hand stopped dead at the border of Ivan's. There was something wrong with his, something dark and sinister, a feeling that drew a chill up the hunter's back. It felt almost like there was a creature living within the metal of the memorial and it had a will of its own, like it wanted him to touch it.
It was a passing feeling; it came and went quickly, but not subtly. For a moment, the half-demon just stood there, contemplating on what to do about it. In the end, when he had dropped his guard toward the plaque to check on the sleeping or dead caretaker of the tomb, the thing in Ivan's name drew his hand to the flat metal plate. The instant he touched it, Dante first gasped in mild surprise, turned to face it, and made an attempt to pull his hand away to no avail.
"Shit." was the only word he discovered that described the situation at that moment best.
No sooner had he assessed the situation and was readying for a good strong pull when the thing in Ivan's plaque shot a feeling of terrible anguish the likes not even Dante had felt before, a torment backed and fueled by a wave of pure undiluted rage, one such that made all the demons and hellish monsters he had dispatched seem like nothing when their emotions were combined.
And then came the pain. A physical wave of sheer hurt that engulfed the trapped hunter and made him cry out. There was a loud indescribable noise that echoed around the once silent cavern, the lanterns suspended from the ceiling dimming down, the torches in the caverns behind going out immediately. The pain intensified slowly until, when it seemed an eternity, the plaque let its captive go. He immediately crumpled at the base of the wall still conscious but barely, his entire body seizing in short second-long intervals every twenty or so seconds. The lanterns above remained dim and blurry, though the letters in Ivan's name glowed a sharp blue before they merged together to form a ball of light the same shade of blue as the letters were before.
Dante's body had stopped twitching, now lying still on the top of the pedestal to the memorial, facing up and watching as the ball grew in grotesque ways to form the blurry shape of a man. He had the most piercing grey eyes, setting his skewering gaze to the devil hunter he had drained mere moments before, but other than that, his form was so smudged out that one could tell he was a man and that was the jist of it.
"Good show, boy." the spectre said, clapping his hands. No sound was generated. "Thanks for your help."
And with that and a wicked laugh, the ghost flew up through the ceiling and disappeared. The last thing Dante remembered seeing before the world went dark was watching the woman on the floor not far from him pick herself up and cast a reproachful glare at him with a single eye. He would never forget that eye.
That single, fathomless, swirling eye with the red that tarnished blood itself.