AN: I should like to point out that this story is primarily set in the Castlevania Netflix universe, with various elements borrowed from the BtVS universe.

Chapter 7: The Sleeping Soldier

Sypha watched, realising exactly who she was looking at.

The sleeping soldier stopped upright, and opened his eyes. He dropped his head. 'Why are you here?'

Sypha smiled. 'The story. The messiah sleeps under Gresit. The man who will save us from Dracula.'

To be honest, he didn't look to pleased with the answer. He turned to Trevor. 'And you? Are you in search of a mythical saviour?'

Well, that was disappointing.

'I fell down a hole,' Trevor stated. She couldn't see that the soldier smirked at that.

Sypha shot him a glare. 'Dracula is abroad in the land. He has an army of monsters. He's determined to wipe out all human life wherever he goes.'

'Is that what you believe?' the soldier asked.

Sypha was startled at the question.

'Dracula's released his horde on Wallachia,' Trevor said. 'That's fact. There's no belief involved. But that's not what you're asking. No. You're asking if I believe you're some sleeping messiah to save us, and no. I don't.'

'Belmont!' Sypha snapped. Now was not the time for his rubbish.

He ignored her. 'I know what you are.'

The soldier smirked. 'And what am I?'

Trevor narrowed his eyes. 'You're a vampire.'

Sypha was startled at the accusation. Why would the sleeping soldier be a vampire? She looked at him and he grinned, showing that he did, indeed, have fangs in his mouth.

'So,' Trevor said, 'I have to ask myself: have we come down here to wake up the man who'll kill Dracula, or did we come here to wake Dracula?' He inexplicably snorted. 'No, you don't fit the profile. I don't think you're Dracula.'

The soldier cocked his head. 'And how do you know I don't fit the profile? No one's seen Dracula in centuries.'

'Perhaps not, but I have gotten a description of him from someone who did see him.' Trevor gave a careless shrug. 'Black hair, red eyes, long nails, standing at six feet and four inches. You're the wrong colouring and you're a little short.'

Wait, Trevor actually knew what Dracula looked like?

There was a slight twitch on the soldier's face. 'That's a very detailed account.' His eyes narrowed. 'She called you Belmont – House of Belmont.'

Trevor seemed amused at this for some reason. 'Trevor Belmont. Last son of the House of Belmont.'

'The Belmonts fought creatures of the night, did they not?' the soldier asked. 'For generations.'

Trevor's eyes narrowed and he walked forward. 'Say what you mean.'

Sypha was suddenly very, very worried.

'The Belmonts killed vampires,' the soldier said.

'Until the good people decided they didn't want us around,' Trevor remarked bitterly.

'And now Dracula is carrying out an execution of the human race.' It could've been Sypha's imagination, but the soldier looked amused. In that moment, the irony of the situation hit her. The people destroyed the Belmonts, leaving their only survivor an angry, sacastic wanderer, and then there's suddenly a threat, a threat the likes of which the Belmonts were born and bred to stop, ripping humanity apart.

And there's only one Belmont left.

If the family had been left alone, would Dracula have been stopped in the first wave in Targoviste?

'Do you care, Belmont?' the soldier asked.

This time, Sypha knew that he was asking if Trevor cared about the humanity that had destroyed his family.

Trevor paused and seemed to think. 'Honestly? Part of me didn't. I figured they brought it on themselves and they clearly didn't want my help. So, no. But now...I think I see where she was coming from. It's time to stop it.'

She? She who? Had someone pushed Trevor into going about killing the night horde?

'Do you think you can?' the soldier asked.

'What I think,' Trevor put his hands to his weapons, 'is that I'm going to have to kill you.'

'Belmont, no!' Sypha protested. 'He's the one we've been waiting for!'

'No, he's not,' Trevor said with a clear level of exasperation. 'He's a vampire, and he's not been waiting her for hundreds of years, have you?'

'I don't like your tone, Belmont,' the soldier remarked.

'This place is old.' Trevor glanced around. 'But its not been abandoned. It's alive and working. So, go on, vampire. Tell her exactly how long you've been waiting down here.'

The soldier narrowed his eyes before looking at Sypha. 'What is the Year of your Lord?'

'1476.'

'That's a year,' the soldier said, surprising her.

'There,' Trevor said. 'On top of that, what kind of messiah creates mechanical death traps to buy himself an uninterrupted nap – in a stone coffin?'

'My defences were not for you,' the soldier stated.

'You could've told your defences that.'

'They are machines, nothing more. They were not intended to protect me from you.' He looked at him. 'I asked you a question: do you care?'

'I care about doing my family's work,' Trevor said. 'I care about saving human lives. I'm going to have to kill you.'

'Do you think you can? If you're really a Belmont and not some runt running around with the family crest, you might be able to.' A sword suddenly flew through the air and the soldier caught it in his hand. 'Let's find out.'

Sypha's gut seemed to be in her throat as she watched this. 'Belmont, you can't do this!'

'Tell it to your floating vampire Jesus here.' His hand wrapped around the handle of his whip.

'You've got nothing but insults, have you?' the soldier moved forward. 'A tired little—' He was cut off as Trevor snapped his whip, throwing the soldier right across the room. He made a recovery though and Trevor pulled the whip back to himself.

The soldier lifted his head and snarled.

Had Sypha been paying closer attention to Trevor, she'd have noticed his eyes flash with interest and his fighting approach completey change. 'Stone the fuck up.' He cracked the whip again. The soldier dodged the next crack of the whip.

'You can't do this, Belmont!' Sypha tried again.

'He's not your messiah,' Trevor told her as he continued to fight. 'A rare breed, certainly, but not totally unique. Besides, Reudi would never fight me seriously. I'm enjoying this.'

Wait, he was doing this for fun? And what did that even mean? A rare breed?

The soldier suddenly seemed amused. 'So, you worked it out?'

'A consecrated whip hurt you, but it didn't destroy you upon contact. You're either really old and powerful, or one of them.' Trevor flung a dagger at him, only for the soldier to leap up.

Trevor manouvred the whip and threw him through a pillar and across the room. As the soldier pushed himself up, Trevor cracked his whip at him again. The soldier raised his sword to catch it. The two of them engaged in what essentially amounted to a tug-o-war over the whip, which ended with Trevor loosing his whip and charging with his short sword. The two of them moved so fast Sypha couldn't really keep up with them.

Even when the soldier seemed to teleport away and appear behind him, Trevor reacted very well. While he was still knocked back, he did protect his front with his short sword and then, rather than hitting the stairs that led up to the coffin, he performed a perfect recovery and shot at the soldier once more.

The soldier teleported again and Trevor spun around, blocking the sneak attack sword blow the soldier had been aiming at him.

'Hm,' the soldier remarked. 'So you have trained with one of my kind before. I didn't realise there were any.'

'There are thousands of years of human history to go back on,' Trevor stated. 'You expect that something like you never happened before?'

'Fair point.'

The two of them engaged in fighting again and then Sypha realised – to them, this was a game. Especially given the tone the conversation took thereafter. It was almost...passive. Her mind began to turn. So, obviously, Trevor's initial deduction about the soldier was wrong. He was not a vampire but something else. Trevor had realised this quickly and abandoned his plan to kill the soldier. All right, maybe not entirely but still...

Sypha's heart though, leapt back into her throat as the soldier suddenly kicked Trevor back into one of the sets of stairs. In the next instant, he was upon Trevor, snarling and pinning him down and forcing his head back by gripping a handful of his hair. Trevor grunted in pain.

'Do you have a God to put a last prayer to, Belmont?' the soldier demanded.

Trevor grunted in pain again. 'Yeah. Dear God, please don't let the dhampir's guts ruin my good tunic.'

'What?'

Trevor plunged a dagger into the soldier's chest.

The soldier grunted. 'I could still rip your throat out.'

Knowing what she had to do, and hoping he wouldn't ask her to explain herself later, Sypha moved, quickly striding over.

'You can,' Trevor said as she moved. 'But it won't stop me staking you.'

'But you will still die.'

'But I don't care,' Trevor said. 'Killing you...was the point. Living through it was just a luxury.'

The soldier laughed. But, sure he was about to kill, Trevor, Sypha prepared her flame magic. The soldier stopped laughing and looked back at her. 'I will incinerate you before your fangs touch that man's throat.'

Thankfully, it wasn't Trevor who asked, though he did look confused.

'I thought I was your legendary saviour,' the soldier remarked.

'So did I,' she said. 'But he saved my life.'

The confusion on Trevor's face instantly cleared up

'You're a Speaker Magician.'

'Yes, and his goal is mine: to stand up for the people.'

'Good,' the soldier said. 'Very good. A hunter and a magician.' He stood up and let Trevor go, stepping back. As he stood, the wound Trevor had inflicted healed over instantly. 'I am Adrian Tepes, known to the Wallachians as Alucard.'

Trevor pulled himself up. 'So...Dracula had a human wife...And you're their son?'

'That is correct.' Alucard dropped his head and laid a hand over the scar on his chest. 'I've been asleep under Gresit in my private keep for over a year, to heal the wounds dealt by my father when I attempted to stop him unleashing his demon armies.'

Shocked, Sypha dropped her magic. 'You are the sleeping soldier!' So he'd already tried? Maybe Trevor was right, in a way. Maybe the legend wasn't as straightforward as she and her people had been led to believe. Maybe there was a reason there had to be two others involved in the legend.

Alucard turned to look at her. 'I'm aware of the stories. I'm also aware that the Speakers consider the stories to be information from the future. Do you know the whole story?' There was a curious look in his face, tinged with a bit of amusement.

A particular line came back to her. Upon Dracula's defeat, the Hunter and the Scholar shall go forth. With their union a bloodline, nearly washed from the Earth, shall be born anew. It was only then that the meaning of that part hit her. Trevor (the hunter) was the only thing standing between the Belmonts and the extinction of their bloodline. Which meant she and him were going to...Oooo! The thought made a blush come to her face and she kept her eyes on Alucard to avoid looking at Trevor (and to avoid the way her mind suddenly wanted to imagine what he'd look like naked). 'Yes...'

He certainly wasn't helping with the way he was still splayed on the ground like that.

Alucard turned back to Trevor. 'The Sleeping Soldier will be met by a Hunter and a Scholar.'

Trevor looked a trifle miffed. 'No one told me that.'

'Why do you think my grandfather tried everything to make you stay?' Sypha asked him, happy to have a way out of that one – and hoping Trevor wouldn't ask her why she blushed later. There was no way she could answer him honestly.

'I hate Speakers,' Trevor grumbled, moving up to his feet and retrieving his weapons as Alucard went and got his coat and shirt.

Alucard pulled them on.

'So what happens now?' Sypha asked.

'I need a hunter and a scholar,' Alucard said, taking his sword sheath and attaching it before telekinetically pulling his sword back into it. 'I need help to save Wallachia – perhaps the world, and defeat my father.'

'Why?' Trevor asked.

'Because it is what my mother would have wanted,' was Alucard's simple answer. 'And we are all, in the end, slaves to our family's wishes.'

'You'll help us kill Dracula?' Trevor asked as he curled his whip back up. 'Even though he is your father?'

'My father...'Alucard hesitated. '...has to die. We three...we can destroy him.

AN: I'm still debating with myself on whether to make this a whole big story or turn it into a series with each Season being a new installment.