Chapter 9: Forgemasters and Plans

Dracula's Castle

A small puppy, normal except for the evidence of decay on its tiny body, trotted over and began playfully hopping at his leg. Hector smiled and leaned down. 'Little Caesar! What are you doing?' He picked up the puppy and scratched him below the chin.

Godbrand spoke up from behind him. 'He's not really doing much, Hector. It's dead!'

Hector frowned as he patted his pet. 'You really don't understand the act of forging, do you? He's not dead. We make life from death here.' He looked down fondly at the animal.

'You make soldiers for Dracula,' Godbrand said, 'which is one reason why he invests so much in you despite your…' he made a disgusted sound, 'humanity.'

Hector's jaw clenched and he looked over his shoulder in distaste. 'What do you want, Godbrand?'

'I actually came to apologise for my outburst in the war hall,' Godbrand said as he paced around the room.

Hector looked at him. 'Excellent apology.'

Godbrand ignored his sarcasm. 'Dracula brought us all here to fight his war, Hector. All the vampires under his reign.'

Hector snapped a rib out of the corpse he was working on and fed it to Little Caesar. 'The war. Not his war.'

As Godbrand continued, Hector set the dog down. 'It's just somewhat galling to have him look to the two humans in the room first. I should have held my tongue, so I apologise.'

Hector walked over and picked up his hammer. 'Accepted.'

'But…' Godbrand walked over and leaned on the table as Hector began to work, 'the other Generals and my subordinates have some questions.'

'Oh?'

'Hector, do you think this war is going well?' Godbrand asked.

Hector responded with a question. 'Are we losing?'

'No, of course not. But it seems chaotic. Undirected, as if we were lashing out at humanity without any real plan beyond wild destruction.'

'I think wild destruction is what he wants.'

'There should be order, right?' Godbrand insisted. 'Even in the removal of a species from a place, wars have orders, plans, and maps, and lines that could be done in less of a—' He cut himself off as Hector turned his head and looked at him. Godbrand lifted his hands peaceably. 'It could be done more carefully.'

'Ah.' Hector looked back at his work. 'There is more wanton bloodshed than I would like. I don't love the rest of humanity. I don't wanna share a world with them but…' He sighed. 'The suffering.' He turned as the doors opened behind them and a pile of corpses was dragged in from the last raid.

'The last of the dead from Gresit?' Godbrand asked.

'Yes,' Hector said. 'The Night Hoarde took as many of their victims as they could for the forgers.'

The cart was tipped and the bodies spilled out onto the floor.

'This'll do.' Hector nodded to the vampire soldiers. 'If there are any left, take them to Isaac.'

Hector then lifted his hammer upright and pressed his hand to the symbol on the handle. A blue glow erupted from the hammer and soon engulfed the entire tool.

'Ah,' Godbrand said, 'the Devil Forgemaster at work again, raising the dead. At least there's no more mistreated dead pets,' he looked down as the dog ran over, looking for attention, and kicked at it, 'to add to your collection.'

'If you'll excuse me, Godbrand,' Hector swung the hammer back, 'I have work to do.'

He then brought the hammer down onto the stone slab where the corpse rested. The glow extended out from the hammer and enveloped the corpse. He struck again, like a blacksmith striking the blade of a sword into shape. The open torso of the corpse closed up. The skin turned a dark brown-grey colour and the eyes began to glow blue.

Suddenly, the whole structure began to shake.

Hector paused in his work.

Godbrand looked up. 'He's moving the castle again.'

'Yes. His wonders to perform.'

Dracula stood before the orb.

He lifted his hand and raised his first two fingers. The hexagonical orb began to move to his command, faster and faster. The gears in the castle began to turn. The orb rose up and grew larger and larger as it turned faster and faster. The castle vanished. When it reappeared across the country, the land around was obliterated.

Trees, the land, even rivers were crumbled and thrown to the wind.

The animals had sensed it coming and attempted to run, but no animal – not even the fastest in this area – was fast enough, being rendered to dust.

Gresit

'I'm a nice person,' Trevor insisted. 'I am! I know how to be nice.'

'No, you don't,' Sypha said.

'I do. I'm nice to everybody.'

'Then why are most of these stories you've told me in the last few days about you arriving somewhere and then getting punched in the face?'

'That's because...' Trevor fished around for a moment, '...everyone else is a horrible piece of shit.'

Sypha didn't buy it. 'See?'

'What?'

They stepped into the shack. 'So, how do we proceed?' Sypha asked.

'Have the Speakers left?' Alucard asked.

'Yeah,' Trevor said.

'I'm sorry,' Alucard said to Sypha. 'On success, I'm sure you will see them again soon in far happier circumstances.'

Trevor moved off to the side to sulk.

'See?' Sypha asked him. 'He knows how to be nice.' She then frowned. 'Is it true, then? The castle can...travel somehow? We know the stories but...sometimes it's hard to separate myth from truth.'

'Tell her about Dracula's castle, Alucard,' Trevor said as he opened a crate and began rummaging around. 'Our day can't get any more ruined.' Sypha presumed he already knew. Yvette must've already told him. It made Sypha wonder just how much the immortalised Slayer knew.

'Dracula's castle moves.' Alucard confirmed it. 'How to describe it...It travels without moving. It appears in new locations, as if by magic.'

Trevor pulled a glass bottle out. 'Yvette told me it also destroys everything in the immediate area when it lands.'

'Well, then, your Yvette is well-informed. Anything caught up in the shockwaves is instantly disintegrated. Water is thrown as if a tidal wave is striking.'

'There has to be some way to trap it,' Sypha insisted. 'How do we start?' She looked at Trevor. 'Would Yvette know?'

'Probably. Which is why I want to go home.'

'Have you been drinking again?' Sypha demanded.

Trevor looked back at her. 'Some chance. But, no. I want to go home. The old Belmont Estate. When I wrote to her, I told Yvette to meet us there.'

'I was under the impression it was destroyed,' Alucard remarked. 'Villagers, pitchforks, torches, that sort of thing.'

Trevor dropped his head. 'It was.' He straightened up. 'But the value of the old house wasn't the house itself. It was what was underneath it: the Belmont Hold. Our family library and trove.'

'The collected knowledge and material of generations of Belmonts who fought the creatures of the night,' Alucard mused. 'That sounds interesting...if it survived.'

'It did survive,' Trevor stated. 'The day after the attack on our family, Yvette returned to the ruins to check the Hold; to see if my parents had escaped to the Hold.'

'I presume they didn't.'

Something in Trevor's facial expression tightened. That was all the answer they needed. 'If there are solutions to the problems of finding and killing Dracula, they are in the Hold.'

Alucard studied him a moment. 'You're guessing though.'

'I am guessing, but I am also confident that I'm right.'

Alucard smiled. 'Fortunate indeed, then, that I chose not to kill you and eat you then, Belmont.'

'And that I decided against gutting you, flaying you, and turning you into shoes, Alucard,' Trevor retorted.

'Such a merry band we are,' Sypha remarked as she turned to head off. 'I will find us a covered wagon and horses if you two can manage not to kill each other while I'm gone.'

'Oh, please,' Alucard said. 'We're not children.'

I wonder about that, Sypha mused as she continued off. I really do.

They waited until she was gone.

'Eat shit and die,' Trevor said.

'Yes,' Alucard retorted, 'fuck you.'

And then the two of them had a good laugh about it.