I'm back! With another round of anticipation and terror that we might get one entire vampire fact out of the new season! So far Isaac's been great and what's happened in Styria is compliant with my own guesses...will I squeak by with nothing contradicting me? Will I have guessed too well and all my work making up a bad-end future will just look like I waited until the last minute and then copied the show? We'll find out!
Also, apologies for taking forever. This has been 95% done for months and I just couldn't get it quite right.
Sypha manages to keep quiet for all of several blissful minutes of watching the it's not a church and it isn't real anyway fuck off God and let Trevor enjoy something for just once burn. But then, being Sypha, she pipes up again for, "But the new vampires you were talking about. Is it because they don't have souls that-"
"Sypha," Trevor wails, because isn't he suffering enough without having to get between Alucard and an angry mob. That's just embarrassing, and Alucard will probably be an ungrateful dick about it the whole time. But then the entire side of the church comes off, and it does not fall inward like it's supposed to but outward, and Sypha has something she actually has to do instead of interrogating people for fun.
She just -
He knows how she'd have done it. Only it took her a while to get the hang of forming ice in midair, and longer for the size and strength of something that could take the impact of a falling wall for even an instant, so of course she's still making it grow out of the ground and of course she's still slow at that and of course it's cracking -
He closes his eyes. It's fine. It's totally fucking fine, it would only matter how completely unable to keep Sypha's abilities straight he is if Sypha or Alucard or anybody else were real and there were actual consequences for misjudging things at the wrong time and why is he so fucking stupid about this it doesn't mean anything there's nothing wrong with her she just hasn't practiced yet he knows this there's nothing wrong she's fine she's fine she's fine she's fine she's fine -
"Belmont?" He half opens one eye to squint at Sypha staring up at him.
Well, there's really only one thing to say at this point: "You're shit at that and I don't want to see it."
Instead of getting mad at him, "Huh," Sypha says thoughtfully, which was the opposite of what he wanted to happen. "And you remember me as - no, all right, I won't say anything more, I think I can guess."
She hasn't. Not the part that matters.
If she had she wouldn't still be talking to him. She'd -
The rest of the church crashes down, and then keeps crashing, deafeningly loud, as the very ground it's on gives way. There's now a burning pit.
There's some screaming at this, which Trevor thinks is pretty unreasonable given how much directly and unambiguously horrific stuff has happened in Gresit. You don't need to get worked up over possible omens and portents of future doom when there are already actual demons eating you.
He looks at Alucard, who scowls defensively. "I didn't build any of this part," Alucard says.
"Is it over the ice ghosts? Did it crush them?"
Alucard's silent a long moment, then, "Yes," Alucard lies from underneath his hair.
"How the fuck are you such a bad liar," Trevor demands. "How. How have you ever made people think you're not a vampire when you're so fucking bad at this."
"By keeping my mouth shut," Alucard mutters sourly.
"More importantly," Sypha says, "do we need to worry about this? Should we be backing up?"
Alucard considers it. "I don't think so… It might sink a bit deeper itself, but most of this area is solid ground."
Which, of course, she hears as… "Let's get a closer look, then!" Sypha says.
"We could just leave now," Trevor suggests. "There's places with actual doors for whatever sacrilegious questions are burning your tongue off not saying."
"I wouldn't want to be irresponsible. Just one ember, you know…"
If Gresit did all burn down maybe people would actually leave the place like they should.
Alucard doesn't even need to be pulled, because of course he'd object to Trevor telling him to go somewhere harmless but cuddling up to a possibly-holy bunch of fire is fine. Why does Trevor have to worry about keeping an eye on him? He didn't try to toddle right into a fire even once while they were actually traveling. Maybe he just hates being here as much as Trevor and lighting himself on fire would be a welcome distraction.
Maybe Trevor should try it? It's hard to think about other things when you're burning. Only it might not work that way now. Maybe it'll be the opposite, maybe he won't be able to think of anything but what - He forces his attention back to Sypha. Fake Sypha. Whatever.
"- only attack people with souls?" Sypha is asking in a whisper that could stand to be a lot more whispered. "Is that why vampires are safe with other vampires?"
"What?" Alucard says.
"I believe you about what you told them would happen, and of course I didn't want to get in the way with tempers so high, but that's not all of it, is it? Because vampires manage it somehow. So is it that they don't harm each other because they only attack people with souls?"
"If a group of them is left unsupervised, the first to think of trying it eats the rest one by one. It's why turned vampires consider cannibalism so taboo." Trevor considers if maybe Alucard doesn't know what taboo actually means, given it sure sounds like it happens a lot.
Also: "So Dracula's fine eating people but turns up his nose at a nice cold draught of fresh vampire?"
Alucard gives him a sort of disappointed look. "He doesn't care," he says, in a tone that suggests he feels Trevor was supposed to know that somehow. Is this common vampire knowledge? Have other vampires been living in terror of Dracula eating them this whole time? It is true that there usually aren't other vampires anywhere near where he's set his castle… Maybe all those other vampires they found there spent their days quaking in fear that they'd be the night's supper. Nice to know the world can sometimes be a little fair.
"But souls. So you're saying vampires do have souls?" Sypha says.
"No."
"Yes," Alucard lies.
"What are you talking about when you say soul, then?" Sypha asks. "How do you know who has one and who doesn't?"
"We're having this conversation instead of being a trio of inert lumps of meat, so we have souls. We're alive."
Sypha frowns. "I thought vampires were dead. Or at least, you did say part of becoming a vampire is being killed."
"To be precise," Alucard starts, and Trevor groans again. He glares at Trevor. "If you don't like me explaining, then you're welcome to do it yourself."
"That's not -" Trevor sighs. "They're not undead. 'S why salt doesn't work on them. They're more like werewolves. Their soul falls out because they're not human anymore."
"Oh, but they have animative souls," Sypha says. What? No, he sort of remembers hearing that phrase once... God, seriously, if Trevor needed to know about the minutiae of different souls, maybe you should've told your priests to be clearer about that. "Yes, but I mean the kind of soul humans have, do you have that?"
"Presumably I would not have the kind a human has given I'm not human," Alucard says, quite casually.
But if he doesn't have an immortal soul why didn't he just stake himself?
"But you're half human. And you are different than regular vampires, aren't you?"
Right, because just offing himself cleanly and being done with it and not, not getting Trevor's hopes up - that wouldn't be dramatic enough, would it, and Alucard is a vampire so that's what the fucking mattered.
"I don't see what that has to do with souls," Alucard says, because he is either incredibly stupid or intentionally obtuse.
"So you're different than them?"
Alucard presses a hand against the scar on his shoulder. "It's...a point of some debate." What's Alucard lying about now? "Nature versus nurture. The differences between dhampirs and turned vampires may come down to different lived experiences. A lack of bruises and skinned knees on our part."
Trevor takes a minute to turn that over in his head. A lack of - right. Weird to think about vampires like that, but yeah, they'd still remember being human even if they weren't really that person. "You mean why halfbreeds are fearlessly overconfident idiots even for vampires. No, she means you personally knowing the difference between right and wrong, dumbfuck," he says. "Unlike the rest of them."
"Oh," Alucard says, sounding inexplicably distressed.
"And?" she prompts after a moment.
Alucard doesn't answer for a bit. "It's…" he starts, then goes quiet again. "The atrocities Belmont accuses vampires of committing are true," he says finally.
"Of course it's true."
"And?" she repeats.
"I don't think anything else I can tell you would be helpful."
"I would like to be the judge of that."
"Sypha, if he doesn't know why he's not evil then he doesn't know. You don't need to interrogate him."
"You aren't in the least bit curious?"
"No," Trevor says.
"And you keep calling him the liar! You told me that dhampirs are even worse than regular vampires."
"And I said he doesn't count."
"Have there really never been any good vampires besides him?"
"Uh." Trevor hesitates. "I guess, there's this really old story about a dhampir that was killing other vampires. I mean I heard it just went crazy, or crazier, and was killing everyone and everything it could get its hands on, but, I guess people might've gotten some of that wrong."
"Neferhotep," Alucard says. "No, you're correct. He killed everyone he encountered."
Trevor throws up his hands. "I tried! Fine! One time one other dhampir did something halfway helpful by being so particularly bloodthirsty that it killed other vampires too during its decades-long killing spree."
"Why, though?"
"Because. Vampires. Are. Evil. That's all! You're not getting a better answer, because there isn't one!"
"Alucard? What do you think?"
"We're separated by several millennia."
"What do you think?" Sypha insists. "You must have more insight than Belmont or myself."
"The best guess of what happened is there was a coup. He was either the sole survivor of the initial conflict or he was left alive by the victors, in which case he must have killed them shortly after."
"And having gotten a taste for vampire blood, he kept at it?" Trevor asks.
"Belmont!" Sypha snaps at him.
"Maybe. Why not? He was half human and they fed him humans, why should being half vampire mean he shouldn't eat vampires? Because it bothered them?" Alucard says with a sudden sneer, so apparently the apple didn't fall far from the Dracula there. "He certainly lasted several times longer than any other known dhampir. Maybe he was the only reasonable one of all of us."
Lasted. "What, vampire blood's extra good for you? I thought you're supposed to be immortal."
Alucard shrugs. "None of us have died of old age. There's no particular reason to believe we're immortal, but given the precedence, by now anyone creating another dhampir has to be the optimistic sort."
Trevor laughs and Alucard glowers at him. "Yeah, sorry," Trevor says. "But it's funny." He considers. "Alright, it's not, is it? Especially…" From the bits of what the real Alucard told him, Dracula had been in a pretty black mood before Lisa showed up. And from that, and because of her, he'd become so optimistic he left her alone to sell magic potions, like that wasn't going to inevitably end with her burned alive.
And, put it that way, Trevor doesn't exactly have a leg to stand on himself about not getting stupid and hopeful, does he? He still can't get over what fucking morons Alucard's entire family is but that somehow worked for them for at least half a century. That's a lot better than half a year.
"I'm not feeling bad for Dracula, though," Trevor says.
Alucard says, "I don't mean you to. We have to kill him."
Sypha makes the little inhale of being too clever.
Okay, it's not always the inhale of being too clever. Sometimes it's just clever. But it's usually -
"Do souls have anything to do with being evil?"
- it's usually being too clever.
"Could you please stop interrogating the concept of evil in front of a mob," Trevor whines. "I don't know if you've noticed but people don't really take kindly to questioning that sort of thing."
"This is hardly in front. Alucard, you don't know if you have a different kind of soul than a vampire, but you aren't anything like how you described that other vampire, or what Belmont told me about them. So a soul hasn't anything to do with that, then?"
"It does and he's stupid," Trevor tells her. "I don't know. Maybe his mom was secretly on great terms with the Lord and asked God to give him a real soul."
Sypha looks at him like what he's saying is far stupider than Alucard could ever be, which he has to admit is a fair response. Fine, so it's not that then. God, he doesn't know! What does it even matter by this point! If Alucard was secretly evil the whole time, and he shouldn't have left him in peace, well it's not like it mattered, is it! Alucard solved that fucking problem for him too!
"Well?" Sypha insists, looking back to Alucard. "You're not just going to let him make things up, are you?"
"If he wants to believe that then he can."
"Well I don't want to make something up. If good and evil aren't a matter of souls, what are they? Physical structures? Something in our brain, perhaps? But you said even if the vampires weren't killed and transformed without brain damage they'd still seek to do evil…"
"That's not what… What does it matter?" Alucard says.
Alucard has a point for once. "Yeah, what does it matter?" Trevor echoes. "Whether it's just that the soul falls off or their soul falls off and their brain also gets filled with evil bile when the transformation finishes, they still are evil."
"Bile?" Alucard says. "How would a digestive fluid get into the brain?"
"You know something and you're not telling me," Sypha complains.
"Whatever he thinks he knows is just something Dracula made up because he thought telling Alucard stupid shit and seeing if he believed it was funny. Think rationally," Trevor says. "If you could get kicked in the head and start doing evil things, then doing evil things wouldn't be your fault so it wouldn't make sense to - aaaand right you don't believe in Hell."
"Can you get kicked in the head and start doing evil things?" Sypha asks. "Could you get kicked in the head again and start doing good things? If a vampire gets kicked in the head -"
"It doesn't matter!" Alucard shouts at her, suddenly wild-eyed and fangy. "It doesn't change anything about what we have to do!" There's a beat where they stare at each other, and then he flickers and disappears.