The trio stood before the entrance to the castle's throne room. It was only natural that they would find Soma there, where he was no doubt waiting for them.
"Are you ready?" Julius asked simply. He received a nod from Yoko and Alucard in turn. There was nothing more to wait for then. The Belmont led the group forward and approached the throne. Each of the hunters could feel the evil power radiating from the youth, which manifested itself as a fiery red aura.
"Soma..." Julius could not help but mutter. It was a sad state of affairs – that things had come to this. He had not deserved such a fate.
"What's up?" a voice called from behind him. In surprise, the trio turned to see the familiar white-cloaked teen strolling merrily towards them.
"What?" Alucard gasped in surprise, glancing back at the throne to confirm what he had just seen.
A curious look on his face, Soma leaned to the side a bit to look between the Belmont and the dhampir.
"What the – there's another me?" Soma exclaimed, at the same time as Julius shouted: "Holy cross! There are two Somas?"
There was the sound of a wine glass shattering, and a cry as the Dark Lord Soma summoned Gaibon to his side.
"Come, worthless fools!" his voice echoed ominously through the room as his aura flared and his feet lifted off the ground. A blue column of light enveloped him and his insane laughter filled the room.
Thinking quickly, Alucard spoke. "We've no time to talk. Now, we fight," he commanded. Luckily, the others were willing to put aside their confusion for now and settle things with the normal Soma later.
The fight was surprisingly short and anti-climactic. It turns out it's pretty difficult to lose when Soma had summoned possibly twenty different familiars, was surrounded by fireballs, had scythes flying every direction and was swinging the Claimh Solais faster than Alucard had thought possible.
Strangely, however, the castle did not crumble upon the Dark Lord's defeat. But the concerns of our hunters were lying elsewhere.
"Soma," Julius spoke first. "How are you here? This should be impossible." The Belmont shook his head in disbelief. "You had become the Dark Lord, and yet..."
Soma seemed just as confused as the others. "I don't know. I was trying out some tricks with the souls I had collected and somehow ended up here..." Alucard narrowed his eyes slightly at that. "In...a future, I guess. I don't really understand it myself..."
"Wait. You said you were using your souls..." Alucard began, considering what Soma had said. It seemed that somehow Soma had traveled here from the past. "What exactly do you mean?"
"Um, well...it was nothing really special..." Soma seemed hesitant to talk about it.
"Soma," Yoko said, with the feeling of speaking to a younger brother. "This is important. What you've done could have serious complications."
"All right, all right, I get it," Soma relented. "I think I should show you. Come over here to the wall." He walked up to one of the walls of the throne room and the others followed.
"There doesn't seem to be anything strange about this wall," Julius commented.
"No, it's not the wall," Soma said. "Okay, watch this. I'm not sure how it will look, but..." From inside of his tailcoat he produced a small dagger of some type. He turned to the others. "It involves using magic power to utilize the full power of the weapon you are using. Like this dagger."
Soma faced along the wall and the others felt a surge of energy. In a flash, Soma was suddenly several feet forward, cutting at the air in front of him, before returning to his original position just as quickly.
Both Julius and Yoko had taken a step back at the sudden maneuver. Alucard, naturally, just stood there looking unfettered.
"That's...impressive." Julius said, though somewhat hesitantly. "I haven't seen anything like that before."
Alucard, however, nodded. He understood the technique well, having used it himself in the Alucard Sword's 'mirror slash.' It was not something he had done often, however, and he had certainly not needed it in Julius's company. "The technique is similar to using holy power to cover the Vampire Killer with flame," the dhampir explained.
Julius's eyebrows went up. "I didn't know that could be done," he said simply, looking at Alucard.
Far away, many years ago...
"What's wrong? Richter?" Maria asked, a questioning look on her face.
The Belmont shook his head. "It's a bit strange, but...I just had a feeling that one of my descendant's was going to forget that you can charge the Vampire Killer with fire."
Alucard looked down. "Hmph. Perhaps you had better study your ancestors' writing a little harder, then..." he muttered.
"But that doesn't explain how you traveled through time," Yoko deftly deflected the conversation back to the more pressing topic.
"Right," Soma nodded. "The souls of succubi have an...interesting effect. It's very short term, but they give a sort of...vampiric bloodlust. And I've found that I time the critical attack just as the effect fades, something very strange happens."
"What?" Julius asked. "You travel through time?"
"No, the technique is interrupted and I end up standing where the dash attack ended."
"How does that relate to how you got here?" Yoko asked.
"Well," the white-clad teen started. "If I use it so that I end up on the other side of certain walls, strange things happen..."
"Like traveling through time?" Julius prompted.
"Yeah, I guess. I also got some other strange things." Soma held out a bottle of holy water with the Belmont name engraved on it and Alucard's trademark sword.
"Where did you get those?" Julius exclaimed, searching his pockets for a producing his own holy water. "Wait, I still have mine..."
"And I as well," Alucard said, holding out the Alucard Sword.
"It's really strange. It's hard to describe what happens." Soma said, then seemed to have an epiphany. "Oh, right." He approached Julius and Yoko and produced a tome of some kind.
"Soma, what is that...?" Alucard started, sensing a strange aura from the book, but had no response as the teen opened the book. There was a tremendous flash of light and a wind came forth from the tome that threatened to pull Alucard in. The light faded much slower than it had come, and when Alucard regained his vision Julius and Yoko had vanished while Soma was getting out a cell phone, of all things.
"Soma, what did you do?" the dhampir demanded, but Soma waved him off as he made a call on the device.
"It's Soma," he said into the phone. He started to continue but stopped, seemingly cut off by the voice on the other end. "Yes, yes. I got them. And in time for the DLC too." There was another pause as Soma listened to whomever he was speaking with. "What do you mean it 'took forever'? Who cares if they're complaining?" A slight pause. "I'm in the game to begin with, anyway, and that's all that matters." Not even waiting for a response, he hung up the phone and turned to the wall.
"Soma, wait!" Alucard called. "You need to explain what's going on, now!"
There was a slight pause as Soma pointedly ignored Alucard, and then a red aura flashed around Soma. He released a primal cry and dashed forward, but just as he struck the wall the dagger was in his hand and he flashed out of sight.
There was a longer pause, and Alucard feared he knew how Soma's trick worked. Alucard himself had done something similar before, a long time ago. Soma had traveled through space and time, as well as acquired one-of-a-kind artifacts with what he had done, and Alucard suspected that it had probably affected his personality in some way as well.
Of his options, Alucard knew what he had to do. He needed to follow Soma, and stop him, before things got out of hand any further.
The dhampir produced a small card, with flashed and turned into a large floating sword; a familiar. Alucard and the sword begin to draw in dark energy from around them, preparing a spell of some kind.
Suddenly, the blade flew up just behind Alucard and began rotating, tracing a glyph in the air. "Gather brother soul blades!" the blade spoke in a strange voice.
As this happened, Alucard transformed into a bat and began gathering energy again. Just before the spell completed, the dhampir turned the energy into a forward dash – directly at the wall. But he did not collide with it; just as Soma had before him, the form vanished as he touched it, along with the sword familiar.