Disclaimer: Trinity Blood does not belong to me.
I just want to apologize that the RCO members will be down to the trinity of the father (Isaak), the son (Dietrich), and the spirit (Cain) because I don't know enough about the other RCO characters… the manga and novels currently published in English haven't gotten that far yet.
Edited Feb/2009: Thanks to DarkScrivener for beta reading.
Chapter 6: And now I speak to you are you in there
You
have her face and her eyes but you are not her
— Tori Amos,
"Bells for Her"
Dietrich saw Isaak calmly take a puff of his cigarette, exhaling the smoke out of his mouth quite leisurely, expression betraying none of the thoughts churning in his mind. Dietrich opened his other eye and slowly moved his gaze to the figure at the older man's feet. The body seemed intact, and the figure in white still hovered above it, weaponless, domineering, jubilant. He swallowed, taking in the scene but not knowing quite where he stood in the current situation.
Cain's laughter dwindled, and his voice was lilting as it rang across the hall. "I do not see myself in you, pure mother," he addressed the doll with his head tilted, a smile in his voice. He straightened, raising his head up to look at the ceiling. "You felt it too, didn't you, Panzermagier? The force of such power, such hunger. There's something that kept her this way, waiting, waiting, insatiable. I had cut off her head, drained her of the Crusnik, but behold!" Cain bent forward and raised the doll's head by a handful of hair. "Here she is."
He sneered, his beauty marred by malignancy, as he continued addressing von Kämpfer. "I do not desire to merge with her, but whatever kept her this way, I want it. We may have use for her yet." His face became that of a seraph once more, the curve spreading on his lips offset by the fangs that slid from their sheaths, his eyes igniting with a manic light.
"She will be the one to renew the world through our fire."
He looked down once more at the body, turning the head this way and that, entangling his claws through the hair and pulling the head back harshly as he spoke, "You wouldn't like that, would you? Pure mother? Negative element? The healer out of the four of us, always the saviour, the martyr. I hold your fate in my hands. These hands that had once slain you will now grant you life and pull the strings of your fate, our very own puppet. Why, just the thought of 02's face when he sees you…" Cain's expression was benign, looking for all the world like an angel about to unleash the wrath of its god.
"Puppet master."
Dietrich started, eyes still on the mesmerizing figure of Cain. "Mein Herr?"
"I will leave this in your care once she's awakened." Cain looked over his shoulder to gaze at the younger man still standing on the stairs, throwing the corpse towards him to land at the foot of the staircase, limbs askew like a rag doll. "Do not fail me again."
Dietrich bowed his head, subservient and mildly relieved. He couldn't help but still feel unnerved, as though an invisible guillotine blade hovered over his neck, ready to nip at any given moment.
The gibbous moon shone, its light lost amid the lamps lit throughout the Holy City. The garden that lay beyond the catacomb entrance was the only place bathed beneath the moon's silver filigree, the roses and lilies opening up as though facing the sun. Beside the moon floated a misshapen orb, as mysterious and alluring, reflecting the light of the sun down on earth, imitating the natural satellite beside it.
In the half-light, half-shadow of the cave mouth a Methuselah noble crouched, his eyebrows set in a frown, his very marrows screaming against the unbecoming pose. But he felt he was choiceless in the matter: however silently he and Abel Nightroad approached this place within the Vatican, they weren't practicing stealth and their arrival would've been noticed and alarms resounded. It was just a matter of time and opportunity before they were caught.
It was well into the evening when Abel Nightroad surfaced from the catacomb. He walked into the small light provided by the moon at the doorway, the luminous brightness reflected off his glasses. There was an air about him, a sadness that seemed so encompassing that the Methuselah wondered how he wasn't suffocated by it.
"Was your visit successful?" he asked tentatively.
"No."
The curiosity dug at Ion's mind, incessant like an itch. He opened his mouth, not knowing exactly what he ought to say when Abel continued.
"I've lost something. I've lost her long before now but…" he sighed, wearily and with the heaviness of centuries. "I thought she would be safe here, and she had been, until…" He clutched at the cross that hung around his neck, the metallic thorns digging into his palm, the ornaments leaving an imprint on his skin. "There is nothing sacred, not that there ever had been. I don't really know what to think. Her empty tomb leaves my mind as empty, and I want to do nothing else but to grieve again."
"S-someone stole a body?"
"Yes…maybe…I do not know. She couldn't very well have walked out of there. She couldn't have disintegrated, there would've been ashes…something…left over. She couldn't have dissipated in that airless coffin. I've stayed by her side that I hadn't known time passed for so long. Dead is dead. I couldn't bear to look anymore. She is not there." He swallowed, lips uncustomarily trembling until with a deep breath he found his resolve, determination settling in him as he straightened his spine, his gaze distant into the far off malformed moon. "But she is somewhere. She has to be. And that is the place where I must be. To put her to rest again, for that is all I can give her.
"I'm not asking you to accompany me on what could turn out to be a fool's quest, Your Excellenc—"
"I'll go with you, regardless. If you'll still allow me?"
"As you will, Your Excellency." Abel conceded, lowering his head as though bowing.
In a dark, cavernous chamber lit only by four wax candles, the shadows stretched, encompassing, hovering, converging in a formless dance with each swell and flicker of the light. At the centre of the immeasurable expanse of the chamber there stood over a pentagram a transparent cylinder, its glass imprinted with magic runes and alchemical sigils. Within was a figure submerged in Lethe's Water, from the River of Forgetfulness, naked and curled like a foetus, long hair the colour of blood floating around it, entangled with wires pinched into the skin of the figure.
Beyond the glass surface a man watched with narrowed eyes, calculating, assessing, trying to arrive at a viable conclusion to the mystery provided by Dietrich's doll. Project Eurydice was underway.
He blew the smoke out of his lungs, keeping his lips pursed long after he'd exhaled, lost in contemplation: Expire. Inspire. Respire. Derivations from the Latin spiritus: spirit, wind, breath—the necessities for a living birth.
"Isn't it a marvel?" Cain's voice was gentle, prying through von Kämpfer's thoughts effortlessly, pride and euphoria lighting his face. "How now, Lilith? About to be born from another tube…how oddly fitting. Back where you began. Where the four of us began."
Still looking at the doll, Cain addressed the black-haired man. "Isaak, have you any words to say for this monumental moment?"
Von Kämpfer dropped the cigarette and ground it beneath his boot. "It just struck me, mein Herr, what's to befall us should we succeed in giving your brother back his heart. It will be through her that we can finally have him in our grasp."
"That is truly a cause for rejoicing. There is nothing else that I long for except to have him by my side once more. Fighting against him is just so unbecoming, rather childish."
"Indeed, mein Herr. That wish will soon be fulfilled. Imagine how powerful an ally he could be. Surely he will come to our side once he sees his heart in our midst. Both you and your brother's wishes will be granted."
"Hmm. Tell me, Isaak. How is our dear negative element? Look at her. Isn't it absolutely profound? We, the creatures of forever, could never really die. Here she is, the proof. I've killed her. I've taken her nanomachines, the very streams of our lives. But here she is with her head attached to her body as though the killing never was."
"…"
"And yet, was my plight all that truly different? The fall from heaven, ensnared by fire beyond scorching, leaving me in cinders. And I, alive through it all, but still incomplete." He sighed, unusually morose. "But indeed, there is nothing in the universe more indestructible than the Crusnik. She and I are proof of it.
"Pouring liquid from a gourd does not necessarily empty it. There will be drops still adhering to the inner surface. And sometimes that one drop could be enough to define its former container as not empty. Well, Isaak, what have you to say?"
"You are very astute, mein Herr," replied Isaak. "What I have discovered upon closer examination is that a great deal of the nanomachines converge here," he continued, indicating the area around the doll's belly. "The nanomachines are reproducing there."
Cain's eyes narrowed in disbelief. "That's impossible," he whispered. "When the Crusnik nanomachines were discovered in Mars so long ago we conducted innumerable experiments on them, and we failed to get them to reproduce by themselves. They cannot be replicated through natural or unnatural means."
"But these have, mein Herr. Like all biological or semibiological elements, they've found a way to survive and prolong themselves." Isaak paused to light another cigarette. "She is with child, mein Herr. Through a nine-hundred year gestation period it has remained an inchoate embryo, dormant as its host is dormant. But it is through this still unformed being and the remaining nanomachines that she was kept alive."
"'With child,'" Cain spat. "She was barren, Isaak. It sickened me to see 02 pity her, but conception between them had never been possible because of this imperfection."
Isaak lowered his head. "I can only conclude, mein Herr, that since the nanomachines found yourselves to be more than adequate symbionts, they've further changed the chemical makeup of your bodies to suit themselves as well as their hosts. Mating between the enhanced humans enabled the nanomachines to create an environment wherein they can replicate themselves.
"Imagine, mein Herr. A child made purely of Crusnik. There is no other perfect vessel for your own regeneration, not even your brother."
Cain grew silent, thoughts unreadable in his cold blue eyes. He gazed once more at the figure floating in the tank, eyes narrowing towards the doll's belly, lost in a faraway memory. After a long moment he spoke, "Assuming your presumptions are correct, Isaak…the Armageddon we had unleashed did not leave enough room or time for its two greatest enemies to procreate. Certainly not during our meeting for the treaty of peace. It disgusts me to think on this, but that would leave the day when she bade us goodbye to side with the enemy as the likeliest time. I had known he'd begged her to stay. I just hadn't realized how this beggary took place. He was rather upset when she broke from his arms.
"And that look in her eyes just before I cut her…." He shook his head at what he had realized. "She allowed herself to be killed. She didn't want to unleash this upon the world." He scoffed, his lips adopting a domineering sneer. "Well, Lilith dear, that sacrifice was for naught."
He turned to Isaak, fixing the other man with a cold unyielding gaze. "Time is not standing still for us, Panzermagier. Do everything necessary to awaken her."
Von Kämpfer bowed his head, keeping it lowered until Cain Knightlord had left him with the doll in the dark. Only then did he allow himself to reply.
"There is no guarantee, Contra Mundi, what her state will be if—once—we succeed in awakening her."
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End note(s):
I borrowed a line from another fic I wrote for HP
(it was a rather nice line and couldn't help but reuse it XP )
PS: Sorry it took so long…14 months. This was actually all written by March '07 but I wasn't happy with it, and am still not even after I snipped off a good chunk (1500 words), so will probably be edited at another time.
Thanks for reading :) More soon…
Mar/2008