Requiem
by Cynical Chaos
I don't own Hellsing, all opinions, thoughts, etc. are my own, blah, blah, blah.
This is the sequel to my other Hellsing fic with Seras Victoria. The one whose name I can't be bothered to remember right now. But you know it don't you? Cause you're my loyal fans. Right? Thought so.
There is, within an ancient manor, a place deeper and darker than all the others hidden beneath its timeless stones; one darker even than the one that a young Integra Wingates Hellsing crawled on all fours to reach. This place, a sub-basement or vault of sorts, has been sealed by a master craftsman. This is a blatant fact to all that have eyes that see. Look at the doors. They are magnificently wrought of a pale, silvery metal and are set at a forty-five degree angle to the ceiling. The design serves to give the viewer the impression that they are much thicker than they look. And while the doors themselves are indeed superb, an equally fantastic locking mechanism is nowhere to be found. However this is not an oversight of the architect, but rather a deliberate attempt to prevent any access to the vault below it. A door that is never intended to be opened has no need for a lock, and, indeed, an adroit observer would notice that there are no hinges either. The positions of the doors are a careful balancing act, for the slightest upset of either of the four foot thick doors will cause both to fall from their settings into the corridor below, completely sealing it.
The gates alone should make one think twice about attempting to enter such a vault, but sometimes the more one seeks to hide something from the face of man, the more eagerly it is sought out. And such is the case of this vault and its contents. But the doors are not the only entrance, as any intrepid thief will be quick to tell you. The room has a rather unusual feature for any subterranean location: a window. The window is a simple device, cut out of more than seventy feet of earth and solid rock and allow only light in to the room. Should anyone try to enter using this means, and he would have to be very determined or psychotically obsessed to try this entrance, he or they would find the window pane itself a formidable challenge. Constructed of a specially treated bullet resistant and polarized glass, the pane is a one foot cube. Its sole purpose is to, by way of a cunning maze of mirrors, to shed as much daylight into the vault below for as long as possible.
This vault seems an unconquerable task for any human thief, but humans were the last thing that came to the architect's mind during its construction. This strong-room, this crypt, acts as a place of rest for a collection of the most blasphemous and heretical written works known to Christendom. All presenting an alternative history to what men know, or think they know, as the truth. All written by vampires. They were the threat that the first Lord Hellsing feared when he ordered the renovation of the vault-crypt. It was this fear that drove him to create the labyrinth of catacombs and corridors underneath the manor. And it was that same fear that later drove his descendant to seal a being that could be argued as his greatest creation in those dank depths. All this for a single room with barely a dozen books. As for the history of renovating that goes back a long time. The room itself is over three hundred years old, and the various vampire hunters that owned the manor above and knew of the existence of the books modified it as they saw fit.
All save for one. He owned the manor and oversaw a force of soldiers and mercenaries, whom he trained and equipped to hunt and kill Midians and their minions. As the others before him, he learned of the vaults existence and sought to bar entrance from any and all who sought its contents and the profane knowledge within. However, this man's knowledge of the vault began when a cult of vampires attacked the manor. This incident resulted in the deaths of many of his men as the vampires attempted to gain access to the rooms below the foundation, which at that time where merely no more than simple strong-rooms designed to hold items such as weaponry and the payment for the men. Having superior numbers and the latest of weaponry, the humans won. Eventually. The aftermath was simple and bloody, and the remaining vampires were subdued and interrogated. And thus the existence of a room containing what the cultists described as, "The true history of the vampire nation" came to light and to the utter obsession of this man's thoughts. He did not seek the power contained in the tomes (that man came much later when the Hellsings came to power in England), instead he tried to ensure that an event similar to what had decimated his men and home. In this mindset he tried to destroy the tomes and found that his predecessors had indeed created an impervious vault. The doors and the window, the only known entrances, completely blocked his passage and tunneling was soon found to be an exercise in futility. But he rallied after several months of wasted effort and reasoned that, if the tomes could not be destroyed, the evidence of their existence must vanish. To that end he destroyed or altered any and all records of the books, and in the process, hunted down and destroyed many of the authors as well. Over the site of the window, he planted a grove of trees in such a way that they would obscure the window, but not the sunlight. The underground passages leading to the doors of pale silver metal were collapsed and filled in. All this for one room.
And it was all this that Seras Victoria had discovered upon her return to jolly old England. This room she had seen in her dreams and sought during the waking moments of night. She had traveled long and studied hard, just to find this room. And, for the most part, she had done so without even realizing it. Upon her freedom so long ago, she had felt lost, felt an incredible wanderlust greater even than her hunger. She sought out other vampires, looking for an existence with more meaning than just simple bloodlust. And she had been disappointed. But in her travels, she found vague references to annals and histories of vampires, internal monologues and autobiographies. These she eagerly hunted and quested for in the hopes that they would serve to give her life meaning. And so, like all prodigal children, she came back home.