Chapter 12: Revelations

Dracula's Castle

Deep in the bowels of the castle, Isaac sat on a grating floor with his legs crossed and bare-chested. He lifted the flaggelation strap and lashed himself with it. He'd had to stop for a short time as he'd been growing numb to the pain. His mind flashed back to his childhood and the betrayal he'd suffered which had set him on this path.

He lashed himself again...and again...and again.

His mind kept flashing back.

He'd been whipped by a lash much like the one he currently held in his hand.

'You theiving little shit!' His master whipped him again.

'I didn't steal anything,' Isaac had insisted. 'I'm trying to learn.'

'I found you dying on the street!' his master snapped. 'I gave you a home and fed you and all you were supposed to do was work quietly and watch my back, not go behind my back and fuck around with the tools of my trade! Sneaking down here, going through my books.'

'I'm sorry!' Isaac sobbed.

'What'd you think you were gonna learn?'

'How...' He looked over his shoulder at his master. 'How to help you.'

His master had frozen a moment and then lowered the spiked lash. 'Oh. You actually wanted to learn so you could help me do my work? Why?'

Isaac averted his eyes again. 'Because...Please, don't be angry with me anymore.'

'Just tell me, Isaac. It's all right.'

'Because I love you.'

'Oh. Oh, bless your heart. Even after everything in your life, you're still a sweet boy who believes in love.'

'I'm sorry.' And then and there Isaac decided what he would do. He made the decision which would push him onto the path of a forgemaster. 'I just wanted to help.'

'I love you too.' His master suddenly lashed him again. 'That's why I do this.' He lashed him again. 'This is how I love you.' And again. 'This is how I teach you.' And again. 'You stop fucking around...' and again, '...and do as you're told...' and again. '...you never use the word "love" again!'

Isaac turned and lifted his arms. The lash wrapped around his arms. Rage had boiled in Isaac's blood and he yanked it right out of his master's lash fell loosely at his feet and Isaac charged. He leapt up and knocked his master to the ground and then he used the thumbs of his bound hands to gouge the man's eyes out.

In the present, Isaac whipped his back again. 'No such thing as love in this world.' And he lashed himself again.

He heard Godbrand before the Viking vampire spoke. 'From a party sent to Arges. Died twenty yards from our door.'

'Arges is some distance,' Isaac remarked as he continued to lash himself while the vampire soldiers put the demon down on the table behind him. 'He must have flown all night.'

'Why do you do that?' Godbrand asked with a curled lip. 'The whipping?'

'Discipline. Peace. Choosing my own actions. And inuring myself to a world of horrors.'

Godbrand groaned. 'Come on. Wake up. We have a horror right here for you.'

Isaac stopped whipping himself and got up to have a look. First, though, he gave Godbrand a hard look to make him back off. Then he looked back at the mutilated demon. 'Imagine: so horribly injured, and so determined to come back to us.'

'And crapping out a minute before it managed it,' Godbrand put in. 'Useless fucking thing. Now do your filthy human magic with it.' He turned and stormed off.

Isaac turned. First he hung up the flaggelation strap before he approached the creature on the table. 'I'm sorry.' He petted the creature's face. 'You struggled so hard to come back home. So loyal.' He took his forgemaster cleaver from where it was clipped to the side of the table. 'Perhaps this is all loyalty buys in a world without love.' He cut open its torso. 'Pain in the night, and death at your master's door. Perhaps that's all that awaits me too.' He set aside the cleaver. 'But you didn't mind. You came home, regardless. The lesson here is that I shouldn't care either.' He pulled the creature's chest cavity open and took up a pair of organ shears and activated its power, causing a red glow. 'Dracula will bring a pure world into being. I believe that. I believe him. I want, of all things, a pure world. A clean world,' he pierced the creature's heart with the shears and the corpse under his hands spasmed, 'where there is only loyalty and only love.'

Dracula sat upon his throne as let the conversations around wash over him.

Then Isaac descended into the room and came to stand at the proper place before him, a more severe expression than usual upon his face. He did paused next to the throne, however, and murmured, 'You're so alone.'

Godbrand spoke up. 'We have to admit that we've lost the party sent to Arges.'

'Taking Arges is bloodshed for its own sake,' Hector said. 'There is not strategy here.'

That was one thing Dracula liked about Hector. He pushed for strategy. In another point in his life, it would have been better. Dracula kept an eye on Carmilla as she looked over at Hector, a calculating glint in her eyes. Still, he would have to wait to see what she was doing. She then spoke up for herself.

'Arges has no real importance. You should have counselled an attack on Braila.' She walked over to the two men.

'Why Braila?' Godbrand asked.

'If you were serious about serving our Lord's war,' Carmilla said, 'you would have seen that taking the biggest riverport town in the region was important. If you take Braila, you prevent escape from Wallachia.'

Isaac continued his descent down to join the others.

Dracula spoke up. 'Any city with running water is a city that we, as vampires, should approach carefully.'

'Running water?' Isaac asked as he joined Hector. 'I've never heard of that affecting vampires.'

'Death by running water hasn't happened in many centuries,' Godbrand stated.

'Why not?' Hector asked.

'Look around,' Godbrand said. 'We moved into the middle of countries.'

'I've been told that vampires couldn't cross running water,' Hector pointed out.

'I've been on boats,' Godbrand stated. 'I've had baths.'

'When?' Isaac retorted.

Hector folded his arms. 'Baths aren't running water now, are they?'

'Course they are,' Godbrand said.

'How can baths be running water?' Isaac asked. 'The water's stopped being poured when you get in.'

Camilla interjected. 'The Greeks used to bury us on small islands because the graves would be surrounded by running water.'

Godbrand, apparently, was still unconvinced. 'I think I would probably feel like running water would kill me.'

'Really?' Carmilla asked sceptically. 'Do you feel like poison would kill you? Of course you don't. It's a thing you learn. It's not like we're given a manual for being a vampire.'

Dracula grew fed up with the pointless conversation on running water, and he decided to stop it before it became a debate between Godbrand and Carmilla. He rose. 'Enough!'

All turned to face him.

Carmilla moved over next to Hector and whispered to him, 'Do you really think that's enough, Hector?'

Isaac spoke up though. 'Power is what matters in this world. I do not see how securing Braila over Arges gives us power. Arges is an old, respected town.'

'I must respectfully disagree with my fellow forgemaster,' Hector told Dracula. 'Taking Arges brings only terror and will scatter the human populace. Taking Braila seals off one side of Wallachia.'

Well, this had never happened before. 'Interesting, Hector,' Dracula said.

Isaac spoke once again. 'I must disclose that I revived the creature that returned. The party was attacked on the road. The assailants are unknown, but Arges is close to Gresit.'

Dracula narrowed his eyes. It would seem, then, that whoever had repelled his forces from Gresit may have been on the road and had intercepted the party heading for Arges.

Isaac looked up at Dracula. 'We are quite certain that Alucard sleeps at Gresit.'

Certain, but not positive. His sleep was intended to heal him from the wounds Dracula himself had inflicted in his blind rage. If he had healed, he would have had the power to accomplish both feats. And he had the motive to do so as well. He had not wanted his father to wreck his revenge against the humans – had gained his wounds trying to stop him.

Isaac then continued. 'And that there was recently a Belmont there.'

A stunned silence went through the entire room.

'A Belmont?' Carmilla demanded. 'I thought they were extinct.'

'No,' Isaac said. 'We believe our Lord's son, Alucard, and the Belmont may have worked together to repel our forces at Gresit.'

Possible, even likely.

'If there is a Belmont left alive, then should we not observe the ancestral Belmont home?' Carmilla demanded.

'Why?' Godbrand asked.

Carmilla promptly lost her temper at Godbrand's stupidity. 'Perhaps on the general notion that Belmonts hunted the likes of us for fucking centuries! And if there's one left alive, then it may have access to the trove of weapons and magical materials talked of across generations but never found, which they used to hunt us through fucking centuries! Am I making myself clear now?' She then spun away from him and looked up at Dracula. 'This is your War Council, my Lord?

Dracula stood there in silence, turning all of this new information over in his head.