The World of the Moon
Twenty Six: Hunters in the Dark
I wanted to try a slightly different kind of story for this. Less fluff all around.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
"What is it with Dead Apostles and castles?" Shiki muttered to himself as he continued sneaking through the darkened corridors of the ruined bastion. "Is it a requirement for getting into the club or something?"
Briefly, he remembered one of Arcueid's lectures on the subject as she explained how this was a hobby amongst vampires, as they played at being lords with their own territories and spheres of influence.
Worse yet was that this particular Apostle apparently had enough influence to have gathered quite a number of minions to his name, whether through draining the blood of helpless victims or being powerful enough to convince others to join him.
This, of course, made the whole affair somewhat more complicated. Simply hunting down this particular Dead Apostle would leave the world with one less bloodsucker, but the several dozen vampires and Living Dead that could potentially become vampires would still be problems that would need to be dealt with. Before, Arcueid had generally left any of the stragglers like thee Dead to their own devices after dispatching the head, apparently secure in the belief that the Church would come and clean up properly after her.
But now she had agreed that leaving them alive to continue preying on humans for longer than necessary, even for a couple of days, wasn't acceptable.
A far cry from the days when she hunted vampires simply because it was what she had been told to do.
Of course, that had led directly to more work for Shiki.
"So, you sneak in and head straight for the head vampire, Bra... Brannagh?"
"Brauner."
"Yeah, that. I'll draw the rabble away from you, maybe lure them into a place where I can take them on too."
"There's a lot of rabble. You want to lure all of them at once? That's going to take a lot of work."
"Oh, don't worry about that," she beamed. "I'm good at noisy."
All in all, he supposed it was an acceptable trade off.
Her reputation could be a bit of a problem at times. Sometimes it manifested in several of the Dead Apostle Ancestors deciding that enough was enough and sending someone after her, like that incident with Nrvnsqr Chaos back when she had just met Shiki. That had been annoying.
Sometimes, though, they problem appeared in the opposite direction – such as now. If she were to make her presence known, the various minions and underlings of the Dead Apostle holed up in here would mostly likely flee as fast as possible. She didn't doubt her ability to hunt them down, of course, but it would end up wasting her time and energy, as well as increasing the possibility that at least one of them would get away and continue infecting other people.
There was always the Church to clean up, of course, but in Arcueid's none-too-humble opinion, the less she had to deal with their involvement, the better.
Well, there were always ways around problems. The various vampires involved would probably be more than willing to handle what they believed to be an ordinary intruder, so that was what she would pretend to be.
Arcueid had never developed any particular talent for sensing the magic used by humans and Dead Apostles because she'd never really needed it. But she still knew enough to sense the wards the Dead Apostle had strewn all about the Castle to warn him of any who approached.
Silently, she wondered if he could tell that Shiki had already killed one of those wards, effectively creating a blind spot around the western side of the castle and allowing him to sneak in undetected. Even if this Brauner suspected that there was an intruder, he couldn't know.
As for her own entry…
Winding her fist up, Arcueid delivered a punch straight into the wall, and with a sound vaguely like a thunderclap a hole about twice her size was blown open, allowing her unfettered access into the heart of the castle.
Now came the slightly more tricky part. No doubt this would alert any present within the walls and send them running to deal with the intruder. Now she had to continue to lead them on without letting them know just who she was so as to prevent a rout. Either that or take them out in small groups so they wouldn't know just who had decided to approach them.
With a confident nod, Arcueid ventured into the darkened hallways of the castle.
The stench of blood was everywhere, Shiki thought distantly as he continued his slow advance through the hallways of the castle. Not that it was something particularly surprising, but it was still a sobering reminder of the nature of inhabitants of the place.
Silently, he pondered how well Arcueid had been doing. Assuming she'd kept to their schedule, she should be busy rampaging through the castle, causing all the underlings to run and try to figure out just what was going on. Would the smell of blood affect her too? She'd recovered a lot of control after he'd gotten her the blood fruit of Einnashe, but he still couldn't shake the feeling of something going wrong now that they were in the heart of the enemy's territory.
Then again it wasn't like this would be the first time she'd assaulted a Dead Apostle stronghold.
He could trust Arcueid.
On that pleasing thought, he rounded the corner and came face to face with the room he had left two minutes ago. He recognized that incredibly tacky suit of armour immediately.
There were no sharp bends that would have allowed me to get into this room. Shiki's eyes narrowed. If that's the case, that the only explanation is magic.
A spatial distortion field of some kind? Raising his knife, Shiki glanced around quickly, looking for the telltale signs of him being trapped in a bounded field of some kind. He wasn't an expert on magic by any means, but this was the sort of basic knowledge one had to pick up if they were going to make a habit of hunting Dead Apostles.
Or they could go the 'monstrously powerful' route like Arcueid had. That worked too.
No use. Even after several long seconds Shiki couldn't find any sign of the bounded field's… well, boundaries. Which meant that he wouldn't know where he would end up if he ended up walking in any particular direction. Even staying still wasn't any guarantee that his location wasn't shifting.
Well, there were always alternatives. This would shoot the 'stealthy approach' method to straight hell, but all in all it was a trade he was willing to make.
Spotting a point of death on the floor, Shiki took a single step over and stabbed down.
Things were going well so far, Arcueid noted, as she continued ducking through the corridors of the castle. She'd run into three separate groups who had come to check up on what the ruckus and noise was all about, and all three had been small enough for Arcueid to ensure that none of them escaped.
Of course this would lead to the other people in the premises being more wary of whatever it was that was stalking them. The large and rather messy bloodstains that now adorned several sections of the place probably weren't helping either.
Breaking down a door, Arcueid stepped into a what appeared to be a rather large and elaborate dining chamber. The elegance of the furnishings was somewhat marred by the desiccated human corpse lain on the table and Arcueid wrinkled her nose in distaste. Evidently the Dead Apostle had finished his meal and his servants had not yet gotten around to cleaning up after him.
A shuffling sound came from the far end of the room, and Arcueid frowned as she caught sight of multiple Dead lurching at her. These mindless puppets wouldn't have the cognitive ability necessary to discover how powerless they were before her, which allowed her to fight as wildly as she pleased.
A grim determination on her face, she extended her claws and leaped forward.
An instant later, the entire floor above her shuddered as walls and part of the ceiling crumbled away into dust and rubble, the falling stones crushing many of the Dead under their weight. From the crumbling stone a dark shape emerged – Shiki, jumping from falling rock to falling rock in an attempt to not get crushed by the debris. A large chunk of stone fell towards Arcueid and she tossed it to the side with a casual sweep of her hand, shattering it into fragments as she did so.
Finally, he landed on the ground in a crouch as Arcueid reached over to kill the last of the Dead that had escaped being flattened, and an uneasy silence descended on the two of them as they looked at each other.
"I thought you were supposed to do your part quietly," Arcueid finally ventured.
"I ran into some trouble," Shiki said noncommittally.
"So, what, do we split up again, or…?" as she spoke, Arcueid kept her sense on alert, trying to sense if any lesser vampires or the Dead Apostle would be approaching.
"I don't know. I ran into a bounded field, I guess that means either the Dead Apostle knew we were here or he's paranoid," Shiki ran a hand through his hair. "Maybe both."
Arcueid craned her neck, looking up to see the extent of the damage. If she leaned juuuust so, she could make out the night sky far overhead and the twinkling of stars.
"Sheesh, just what exactly did you stab, Shiki?"
"I thought it was the point of the death for the second floor."
"It looks more like for the entire eastern half of the castle," Arcueid shot a glance at Shiki. "Weren't you supposed to have killed Louvre so silently you got past Enhance and a Mage Association army without either of them knowing?"
"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy… or something like that," Shiki shrugged. "Come on. He might have tried to run in the meantime."
"Somehow, I doubt it," Arcueid said as they began walking through one of the intact doorways. The rabble, maybe, but the Dead Apostle of a Castle or a territory have a thing about never leaving the place. I guess it would be considered a blow to their pride if they were to retreat? I never really understood that, to be honest."
"Speaking of Castles, how did this Castle manage to get set up here without anyone noticing?"
"Oh, people noticed," Arcueid said offhandedly. "Mostly the Church and Atlas and Clock Tower… and me, I guess. It's shielded from view from ordinary humans, and there're enough of these Castles around that I guess a Dead Apostle thought he could go under the radar for a while?"
"He must still be pretty powerful if he managed to claim a castle, right?"
"I guess," Arcueid shrugged. "I mean, before it wasn't something I really paid very much attention to."
And after that the two of them were silent as they continued making their way through the castle.
With navigation made somewhat harder due to the collapsed Castle (but only somewhat, since in between Shiki's agility and Arcueid's strength they were able to keep up a brisk enough pace.
A few more scattered minor Ghouls and Living Dead were still milling about, but they were dealt with quickly enough, and before long they had ended up in front of what Arcueid could feel as a supernatural presence.
It was the vampire – or at least, Shiki hoped it was.
"I'll go first," Arcueid said without preamble, and blew the door down with a single swipe of her claws, before charging into the room.
Or at least, she tried to. She leapt forward, but barely appeared to have crossed any distance at all. Shiki's eyes narrowed. The spatial distortion again.
Through the doorway, he could vaguely make out the figure of a man dressed in rich red robes, eyes glittering like fiery coals from an inhumanly pale face.
"The White Princess, here?" he demanded. "But it is no matter. Not even you can break through to reach me, Princess!"
Not wasting time with words, Arcueid swung her arm out, letting a ripple of energy pass through the air – which twisted away to crash into the ceiling.
"I see," Arcueid finally said after a silence. "A bending of the space of reality to prevent or force movement – it's not on the level of the Second Magic, but approaching it."
"No matter how powerful you are, you are forced to operate within the realm of the physical," the Dead Apostle was acting uncommonly smug for someone located in the same room as Arcueid, Shiki decided. He supposed that he would be able to pull off the same trick to get him out of the room instantly, so he probably felt secure in his position.
"Shiki," Arcueid said. "Kill something."
Theoretically Shiki could concentrate hard enough to see the death of the magic that now filled the room, but doing so had a nasty tendency to cause his eyes to bleed and be rendered unusable for several days – not something Shiki particularly desired. And besides, it appeared Arcueid already had a plan in mind, so…
A point of death on the wall right next to him. Almost without conscious thought, Shiki stabbed it.
The rumbling sound as the other half of the castle began to collapse was somewhat satisfying. The floor giving way from under him, decidedly less so. With a light tap of his feet, Shiki jumped into the air, avoiding a chunk of falling stone as it careened down at him. As it passed, Shiki slashed at it, splitting it apart.
Meanwhile, the vampire Brauner appeared to have been disoriented by the sudden destruction of the castle – and somewhat more relevantly, that there were now several hundred objects shifting and warping at random through his bounded field, rendering everything a confused mess.
He focused, stabilizing the space around him for a brief moment – and it was in that moment that Arcueid, hovering in the air nearby, struck.
Eyes shining golden, she brought her hand forward – and blades of howling wind formed in the space all around the Dead Apostle, tearing him to shreds in a second. Watching from his vantage point of crumbling stone, Shiki was briefly reminded of the time he had seen her do almost the same thing to Roa – and how much more powerful this casually summoned blast of wind was compared to the backbreaking effort that had consumed her life back then.
Closing her eyes, Arcueid breathed out, letting the wind disperse and the blood spattered remains of the Dead Apostle fall to the ground.
And then a chunk of falling masonry struck her square on the head.
Not pausing to see Arcueid's reaction (he could hear her annoyed grunt anyway), Shiki switched his focus to jumping across the falling stones and until he could find safe purchase on the ground.
"Well, that's that."
"Yeah," Arcueid nodded once. "I wasn't really expecting to level the whole castle, but I guess it's not a big deal either way."
A single forlorn tower stood in the distance, apparently having not been affected by either of Shiki's sudden killings. It was all that remained of what had once been the bastion of a Dead Apostle.
"Are we done here?" Shiki questioned is he reached into the pocket of his jacket, drawing out the bandages he used to cover his eyes when they weren't needed.
"I suppose. I mean, there might still be Dead and Ghouls around, but if there are they'll be trapped under the rubble," Arcueid continued. "I guess we can leave this to the Church for cleanup."
"Ah, True Ancestor! And… Tohno-kun?"
"Speak of the devil," and Arcueid whirled to face a familiar dark shape that had emerged from the woods around the castle. "Hiya, Ciel! How are things?"
"What are you – why is the entire castle…"
"Well, we already killed the Dead Apostle. That's the hard part out of the way, so I guess I can leave the rest to you," Arcueid gave Ciel a cheery wave and grabbed a hold of Shiki's arm. "Take care, Ciel!"
"Ah! Wait! You have-" anything else Ciel was about to say was swallowed up in nothing as Arcueid tore a hole through the air to bring them back to the outskirts of the Millennium Castle.
"Should we have left behind like that?"
"Oh, come on. You know if we'd stuck around we'd end up with another hour of questions and debriefing," Arcueid paused. "And maybe she'd try to fight me again anyway. You know how it is."
Shiki sighed. "You should get along better with her, Arc."
"I'll think about it," she said flippantly. "But for now… we work together pretty well, don't we, Shiki?"
Shiki smiled and nodded as he reached up to retie the bandages around his eyes. "I guess we do, Arcueid. I guess we do."
Thank you for reading.
Next: Tea for Two