Hello everyone, and welcome to the first chapter Brother of Dark Blood 2.0!
One of my oldest and, surprisingly, well-loved pieces of work, it's been far too long since I have really given it any thought. That being said, I can see many of the mistakes that I have made on it. Some are small, others are quite obvious, but in the end, I wish to update the work. I will redo scenes with some better grammar and words, while completely recreating some scenes altogether.
Please enjoy this resurrected story!
Disclaimer - I don't own Castlevania or any related character. It all belongs to Konami. I also don't own Vampire Hunter D or any related character. It all belongs to Hideyuki Kikuchi.
Chapter One: The Awakening
No one knew how The Frontier came into being. Or, rather, so much time had passed that the newer generation gave little to no concern for the world they lived in. The threat of Nobility had diminished considerably and, while they still lived and so did the creatures of the night, many children now knew how to hold a weapon and not even blink when having to stake their own family members to save themselves. The people of today were violent, to point of calling the human race even more heartless than their undead oppressors, but it was the only way to exist in a world blanketed by darkness.
Some parts of the Frontier were old, ancient. Older than that before the war, before the nuclear war that allowed the Nobility to take control of the word for so many centuries. There was nary anything of the old world left, save for ruins and artefacts that had survived the destruction, and the Nobility had tried greatly to keep such things hidden. The human race was still an important food source and, with the Nobility in decline, it would do no good to have them start a revolution.
The ruin laid in the moonlight, the wind howling to the point travellers would mistake it for the sounds of ghouls who would try to possess them in their dreams. What was once a crypt of majestic design was now no more than a mere entrance in the side of a mountain. The stone pillars and walls, faded with time, once were decorated with angels and roses. Now they had left black faces in their wake, some leaving slight traces of faces that became ghastly death masks in the moonlight. The white rays illuminated the entrance, but no one would dare step inside. Fear of the possible creatures that could be inside, ranging from cave-dwelling trolls to maggots who would spit acid, kept them away. They had no way of knowing, though, that there were no such creatures inside. The cave, a perfect place to rest or call home, was barren. The creatures of the night were too afraid to go inside.
Wrapped in darkness, untouched for aeons, was a crypt. Even though it had been locked away out of time and thought for so long, the six pillars that held up the roof of the crypt stood as strong as the day they had been crafted. The pillar's artwork was also faded. Cobwebs hung in-between the top of the pillars and swayed slightly with the wind. A coffin made of stone laid in the middle of both sets of the pillars, covered with dust. The ruin was once an old burial vault. A resting place made for coffin's occupant.
The ruin was once an old burial vault.
A resting place made for the coffin's occupant.
For so many years the creature had hovered through the void. Cold, dark and bottomless, he went through it as weightless as a ghost. He was a brain, a soul without a body, and that was fine with him.
The great, peaceful sleep.
Where there was no violence, where there was no man, where there was no pain and no reasonability. He was totally alone, as his life has always been destined to be, and for once he did not mind the loneliness. But his peace was marred, for broken little pieces of the outside world stabbed into his mind and played before him. Jagged bits that told him the story of the world he had left behind; a world that was not the world he had left.
He knew it all. The war that destroyed the world, the fall of man and the rise of all the night creatures, the ongoing decline of the vampires and his father who had made himself into something of a God. It was these thoughts that made him was to find a way out of the void, to see the light and find the bastard that he thought had changed. That he thought he had saved. The man, his father, who had broken the final wish of his mother. But such thoughts left as quickly as they came, and he was once again sent tumbling through nothingness.
But now, now things were different.
There was something else in the world now, a new presence that struck him even greater than the blasts of the weapons that had destroyed man's world and the presence of his father. A new, familiar yet so alien presence. Then there were the pieces, larger and sharper than anything before. Events, battles, people, and death. A man, cold as ice and cruel as death, with a face young and so beautiful. A beauty that left him stunned. Not so much the beauty itself, but the familiarity of it. He recognised the young man's species right off, but it was the essence that left him dumbstruck. He could never mistake such a feeling.
"Another."
"There is another."
"Like me."
"A...brother."
His mind, trapped in a limbo-like state, sparked to life. These thoughts were even stronger than the thought of him killing his father. A heart that hardly ever pulsed started up again with a powerful beating. Lungs inhaled stale air. Bones and muscles popped and cracked from years of stillness. He smelled death, heavy and burning. Light flared like the sun. He dived into it unflinchingly.
Over 10,000 years of stillness were shattered when the coffin lid was flown off and smashed into the walls, breaking into dust. The sound destroyed every bit of silence. The coffin's occupant inhaled his first breath in the new world, and his eyes opened calmly. They were pure gold.
Slowly rising until he was in a sitting position, he regarded himself. He was clad in an ornate black coat with gold trimmings, with a waistcoat held together by silver buckles, and his large cuffs were folded back till his elbows. His hands were covered by black gloves, his long legs were encased in glossy black knee-high boots and a voluminous cape was draped over his broad shoulders, clasped by a metal chain. His face could only be described as beautiful, statuesque even. Like gleaming marble that had been sculpted by a master. His long, white blonde hair hung down his shoulders.
The face of Adrian Fahrenheit Ţepeş, or Alucard as he preferred, pitched into a mournful expression. His voice, deep and even and not having changed an iota since he had fallen asleep, mirrored his countenance. "I've failed." He said, the words coming out more like a confession of sin.
But, in his eyes, that was entirely the case.
It took time for the blood to properly circulate throughout his body, for him to feel his limbs again, but once the feeling had returned to his legs he headed straight for the entrance of his tomb. He had to see the world, he had to see what had become of the world he had left behind. He did not try to reassure himself by thinking that the things he had seen were just a dream. Such human things would not do anything for him. But that did not mean that he could not feel, and this was proven thusly when he saw the barren landscape that was once a beautiful forest. The despair that the sight granted hit Alucard like a tidal wave, almost making him fall to his knees and roar until his lungs burst. He did not allow himself to fall.
He put all emotions aside and went forth, walking into the new world with his goal in mind: Finding his brother.
The thought still baffled the Dhampir, for numerous reasons. Alucard had spent his entire life growing up as the only spawn of Dracula, conceived from the pairing of his human mother and father, his birth was regarded as both a miracle and a curse, for the birth of a healthy and long living Dhampir was rare. Those born from weaker vampiric bloodlines tended to die at birth. The curse of his life came from being the son of Dracula, for both carrying the bloodline of his father and for inheriting all the strengths of his darker kin.
His immortality was his curse. How many lives had he lived through, how many friends and loved ones were dust now? For the life of him, Alucard could barely remember. Age is finally catching up with him.
Alucard didn't know how or why his father had decided to have another child but knew with certainty that this child was brought into the world without any of the love or care that he himself had been raised with. What confused the Dhampir was why had he only awoken to this child's presence now, when he had been around for nearly 5000 years. It didn't make any sense, and while Alucard wondered if his father or some kind of magical creature had placed a spell on him while he slept, such things were irrelevant.
The fact still remained: He had a brother, a little half-brother. There was something in this new world that he could go to, someone he could be with. All those that he knew may have been gone, but he took some comfort in knowing that he was completely alone in the world.
His white-blond hair blew about him in the wind as he walked out into the barren land, taking the first feel of the night as the rays of the moonstruck his being and felt the cold air on his skin. It was blissful, to feel such things again. It had been far too long. He chose to remain in his clothing, not caring if they stood out to the people of this world. They were, as he painfully came to realise, one of the only two things he had left that reminded him of his own time. The second was his mother's sword which, even after all this time, still retained its strength.
Alucard came to a stop when his senses sharpen, something was moving underneath the ground. Something was coming. His sharp eyes saw the groves in the sand, and his hearing could detect was sound like tittering. Then, giant pincers burst from the ground and what appeared to be giant beetles came into the night. Four in total, as big as waggons, they circled the Dhampir and stared at him with black eyes.
A human would have run in terror at the sight of such creatures, but to Alucard, the sight only served to remind him of his goal. Find his brother, and then slay his father. He also felt a surge of—excitement. His full lips curled into a small smile, yet his eyes held a feral glee. Never, in his life, had he been more eager to cut something up. He did not feel any bloodlust, not yet at least, but was aware of the rage that bubbled dangerously close beneath his skin. These creatures, whatever they were, now stood as the perfect means for him to vent some of his anger. If only a little.
Pulling his blade free of its sheath with a hiss, he took the blade in both hands stood very still. The air around him picked up, making his clothing and hair fluttering. His eyes remained golden, yet his incisors elongated into fangs and bit into his lower lip. He tasted his own blood and felt power shoot through him like a poison-tipped arrow and each muscle in his body awoke. Dhampirs could feed and gain strength off their own blood.
The beetles charged. Alucard roared and swung his longsword in a wide arc. He would kill these creatures, find a settlement of some kind and find his brother.
That was his mission, his new purpose.
And then—he would find his father.
There you have it, chapter one reimagined!
I hope this was worth the wait!
Expect the next chapter coming soon!