Chapter 8: Speculum de Fatorum

Seras found Pip at his desk, carefully turning the pages of some great text before he carefully jotted a note down and then circled a city on the map he had spread out before him. "Bonsoir, ma chére," he said without looking up from his work. "I was wondering if I'd see you yet tonight. I have something to show—"

"Pip…"

Briefly, the Master Librarian glanced up from his work, then returned his gaze to her so sharply that she heard the vertebrae in his neck pop. "What happened?" He rose to his feet, knocking an inkwell askew with his sleeve. "Seras, what happened?"

Seras put a hand to her bruised and bloodied but healing cheek. I got caught between two lesser vampires sorting out their differences. One of Hector or Isaac's night creatures got excited and attacked me. Godbrand thought he might try to kill me again. That bitch Raman is in a fit of pique. But she faltered, nonsensical syllables stumbling off her tongue as the Librarian rounded his desk. "Father…" No more words passed her lips as he came forward and pulled her into his arms. Seras grit her teeth at the gesture, far more familiar and intimate than she would have allowed in her own household, but Pip was warm to the touch, like all humans and between the inhale and exhale of his lungs, she could hear the quiet lull of his heartbeat.

No night creature could ever mimic this consolation.

"You should sleep, chére," Pip murmured. "You look awful."

She was afraid to sleep these days. The nightmares were always waiting for her now. Pitchforks and fire, the square at Targoviste with its lone stake burned black, the Bishop who had taken Lisa. Not the real one—Seras had never met him—no, the man who condemned Lisa in her nightmares was always Bishop Maxwell, as if the sadistic goatspawn hadn't despoiled enough when he was alive. Always, she saw his mad grin underlit by flames, heard his oaths and judgements like war cries. If the Targoviste Bishop was anything like that psychopath, her friend never stood a chance.

Animals, the lot of them…

"You can't keep doing zhis," said Pip, thinking she'd ignored him. "I can't watch it anymore. And you are coming to the end of your limit faster zhan you think."

The alternatives were worse, Seras thought as she pulled away and moved toward the chair he'd vacated. True, this wasn't the first time her master had mistreated her. Nor was this the worst occasion. She leaned forward to fold her arms across the surface of the desk, then rested her head atop them.

"I know what you're thinking, Seras, but you're hanging onto something that's already gone. Can't you see that, ma chére?"

"If it is such a lost cause, then why are you still here?" she growled. "Why do you enable it, dragging demons from Hell and loosing them in Wallachia? Trading in and selling weapons and artifacts to the Generals? You've turned your back on humanity just as Isaac and Hector have."

"I stay for you. I do what I must for you. You know zhis," the Librarian snapped impatiently.

"And yet you ask me to turn against my master? My fa—"

"He is not your father anymore, Seras." She felt him plant his hands angrily on the desk. "He's never going to be your father again. Look at what he's done to you, for God's sake! Zhis isn't the first time you've come in here bleeding and acting like everyzhing's okay."

"And what would you have me do!" she roared and raised her eyes, the whites of them gone black with anger while her irises blazed red. Her voice echoed like thunder in the archives, causing them both to tense at the thought she had drawn the unwanted attention of the castle's other inhabitants. Letting out a breath of air, Seras softened her face and her eyes faded to normal. "What would you have me do, Pip? Dracula is still my sire and the greatest of our race. Resistance would be death."

"Adrian tried."

"And look what happened to him." She clenched her jaw. Stupid boy. Stupid, spoiled, arrogant boy; of course he was brazen enough to take on their father alone as though the responsibility were his and his alone. He should have waited. He should have raised support to challenge Dracula, spread doubt and dissension amongst the Generals, revealed his madness and his aim of self-destruction and how he intended to take everything in existence with him. He should have gone to her.

Seras slammed her hand on the Librarian's desk. But then I should have done the same.

Adrian was a fool to challenge their father alone, but what had she done that was any better? She'd conceded to Dracula's demands. She'd called forth his Generals, led his armies, and scattered the Night Horde across Wallachia. She'd put her remaining loved ones in harm's way. What had she really done to prevent any of this?

Barring her pathetic attempts to change Father's mind behind closed doors. Enduring his punishments like a powerless child…

"Seras," Pip said.

She turned away. "He is my father, whatever you say. Whatever he does. Nothing will ever change that." I cannot kill Dracula…and, I think, for the same reason, he can't kill me. With a wife and son, and her a friend and brother, already in the grave, how could they bring themselves to slay each other? No. It was too painful to imagine. "I…still love him, Pip."

He sighed, bringing a hand to his cheek and slipping his fingers below his patch to rub his eye. It ached when he was frustrated, he'd confided in her once. "I know you do, love. I know."

"But you're right, of course." Seras lowered her head miserably. "In the end, I may have to go the way of Carmilla."

Pip had the grace to remain silent as he looked at her, brow creased in what may have been sympathy or concern. "Can you?" he asked. "Fight him, I mean."

Seras shuddered at the thought. Her master predated her by three centuries and had used the time well. Though he scorned magical weapons, finding them crude and distasteful, his natural vampire abilities were a power unmatched by any other vampire in the world. Skills sharpened to such precision one could almost call it beautiful the way her master fought. His knowledge of steel and black powder was nowhere near as extensive as her own, but Seras was not fool enough to believe this would save her. Both of them could regenerate their bodies with remarkable speed, but if pressed, Seras would have to say Dracula's was the faster. While she had mastered a shadow form, rare among their people, Dracula held dominion over hellfire, the dark inferno, and many other wicked arts she trembled to recall. Arts she had not seen in use since Bucharest.

To fight her father…the last time she had opposed a being so powerful had been the Mad Belmont.

"I can try," she said. "I was prepared to do so once."

"Were you?" asked Pip. "You've never told me this."

"It was a long time ago." Things were different then. More urgent. And her opponent wasn't this slow decay of a griefstricken vampire.

At the very least, Seras thought, she'd have a greater chance at defeating him than Adrian did. Neither sunlight nor any vampire detriment would kill her or her father, but everything had a limit. Or so the Lady Integra always insisted. No matter the odds, everything had a breaking point. She could have done it. Seras smiled ruefully. She would not have stood idly by while her homeland was torn apart by vampires. Even though the Iron Lady of House Belmont would've been nearing her seventieth year had she lived, Seras had no doubt she'd have taken up that dreadful sword of hers, martialed her brood with their whips and knives and conniving spells, and advanced on Castle Dracula with no more hesitation than a lioness feels when prey is in sight.

What a story that would have been for the ages.

But Integra was dead. Her sons and daughter were dead. Her grandchildren were dead. There were no Belmonts left to hunt them. An old anger flared in Seras' chest at that, but it dissipated quickly.

"We're a sorry resistance, the two of us," she murmured. No begrudging Belmont support. Enemies all around. Adrian gone. Or so the world seemed to think. Isaac, for one, didn't believe Adrian had been killed by Dracula. Not out of any particular concern or optimism; the forge master was always factoring in his obstacles no matter how obscure or unlikely. If there was a chance Leon Belmont himself would shake his old bones out of his grave to fight their master, Seras had a feeling Isaac would be ready for it. Adrian's fate had never been disclosed, his body had never been found, so it stood to reason there was a possibility in the young man's mind.

"What about Walter?" asked Pip. "And your entire household? Aren't you counting them out a little prematurely, chére."

"Maybe not Walter or the Werewolf," Seras raised an eyebrow. "But the others have no love or loyalty towards me, and the only thing they fear more than me is Dracula. Were I to openly rebel against him, how long would they stay with us?"

Silence lapsed between them like a veil, and Pip lowered his head, at a loss. "And I suppose the werecat is unreliable as well."

Seras clenched her fists at the mention of the little beast. Although Schrödinger had been in her court for almost fifty years, his loyalties and motives had forever been his own. No matter what was at stake, he was always the bystander who'd taken a liking to her and whatever personal amusements he found in watching her life. And Seras had been fine with that. She'd even found it charming at times.

But she was hard-pressed to forgive him his betrayal of Lisa.

She had not seen her page since that night, only heard his voice when he needed to pass along a message. Otherwise, he'd kept well out of her notice and good riddance to him.

"Well," Pip said solemnly. "At the very least, I finally have some good news for you."

"What good news could you possibly—" Seras stopped and blinked uncomprehendingly a moment, then two. Then it slowly dawned on her.

He found it.

That was the only thing she could think of that mattered. He had to have found it or, at the very least, a solid idea of where it was. Months they had searched, consulting every last ancient text in Dracula's library that so much as mentioned the damn thing. She'd stolen into other vampire keeps to read their tomes, had gone to Speaker tribes in hopes their oral histories had spoken of its final whereabouts, and she'd even followed a lead straight into a dragon horde. Nothing. Until now. She wanted to ask how he'd found it. Which ancient passage, whose advice, what clue had pointed the way? She watched the Librarian pull a copper key from his robes and circled around to her side of the desk where he unlocked the bottommost drawer to her left. God, she'd been sitting so close…. "How did you find it?"

"Quite by accident, really." Pip removed a small bundle wrapped in a dark cloth. "You recall your father commissioned me to locate a Carpathian mirror?"

"Yes." Dracula had wanted to add another unique transmission mirror to his personal collection for some time, since before Lisa's death even. "Wait, you were still looking for one? With everything that's going on right now?"

He shrugged carelessly. "I am the castle librarian. It is my job to procure any weapons, knowledge, and curious artifacts the Master requires of me. And I take pride in finishing the jobs I am paid to do. Dracula never commanded I stop searching for his miraculous magic mirror, so—"

"Are you saying the mirror you found for my master and the one we've been looking for is…"

"I think they are the same." Pip grinned. "The Carpathian scrying hermits were clever. And to be honest, I don't think the purveyor I bought this one from had any conception of what it really was."

The Mirror of Fate.

What else could she do but leap out of her chair and throw her arms around his neck. The Librarian yelped in surprise, but she felt his shoulders slacken soon enough and his arms wrapped around her torso, pulling her close again. "I don't think I say it enough," Seras murmured into his neck. "But thank God Lisa and I pulled you from that battlefield."

He said nothing, only tightened his embrace before he withdrew and gestured to the bundle on the desk. "Shall we?"

"You have not told Dracula about this?"

"Never."

Seras unwrapped the cloth, unleashing a myriad of dark shards that spun and danced around their uncanny origin of gravity. Tentatively, she reached out to the nearest one and scratched a rune into its surface, prompting all the fragments to arrange themselves in a massive, solid piece. Black as a starless midnight it was, and it reflected little in its dormant state. Her own face, and the Librarian's, stared back at her but only in shadow. As if it were not her reflection at all but an arcane specter that took her form, and Seras found herself unable to hold the mirror's gaze for very long.

"Oh, wow," she breathed as she hastily looked away.

"I know. It's like that."

"It's larger than I imagined." In all the stories she'd heard, she'd pictured it a small mirror to be held in one's hands. A solid piece that was easily transported by whichever soothsayer or witch carried it. "And you're sure this is the real one?"

"Absolument."

"Is there a special incantation I must invoke first?"

Pip shook his head. "Non. Although it can't hurt to show a little courtesy. Or I suppose you could just write your intent in runes upon its surface."

Seras had little knowledge of runes, so she drew herself up, faced the mirror and lay her hand on its glossy surface, which rippled like water at her touch. "Speculum de Fatorum," she whispered. "Mirror of Fate. Show me please, if you can, where my little brother is. Show me Adrian Țepeș."

At the sound of her words, her and Pip's reflections faded into the obsidian surface and it seemed to grow warm with light beneath her palm. Already, though, Seras regretted her question. What would the mirror show her? A shallow, unmarked grave? Her brother's remains ferreted away somewhere in the castle like a fox cache? She had not prepared herself for such a sight, and she averted her eyes. As her lifeless lungs sucked in an involuntary breath of air, Pip put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed, bringing her back to task. This was her last hope. Ordinary distance mirrors had yielded only darkness to her. If there was any magic mirror that could show her what had become of Adrian, it was the Mirror of Fate. She had to face this. She had to know how and why her brother died. Or if…just maybe, she had reason to hope he lived still. Raising her eyes again, Seras focused as the inky blackness gave way to shapes and shadows, slow as a sunrise. Small dots of light appeared one by one and brightened the image. Archives, she realized. Lamps lighting shelves upon shelves of books. But this wasn't the castle's library. These were lanterns, not electric lights. This library was…. "Why are you showing me this?" Then she saw him. Standing before a display case filled with vampire skulls was a familiar, young man with golden hair and the sun in his eyes.

"He's alive," Seras gasped. "My brother is alive! Do you see, Pip? He lives!"

"Oui! Merde." The Librarian let out a bark of disbelieving laughter and the arm across her shoulder wrapped around her neck in a partial embrace.

The relief that filled her to the core brought her to her knees, bringing Pip to the floor with her. "He's alive…" She brought a hand to her mouth, bloody tears streaming down her face. "Thank you."

"Mon Dieu…" Pip shook his head. "But how, chére? The other mirrors never produced his image. Mirror, is this happening right now?"

The Mirror of Fate flashed and the image changed to the two of them kneeling in the library and staring into its depths.

"What happened?" asked Seras. "How is this possible? Where has he been?"

The Mirror's flashed for a moment, as though annoyed by so many questions, but the image drifted to what she recognized as her sire's laboratory. She saw Dracula step away from his great distance mirror and tear the pages from one of his precious books, then smash some nearby glassware with an enraged cry of grief. He roared his plans to raise his Hell army, to raise a Night Horde, and Adrian was suddenly there. No sound came from the image, but she saw her brother's brow creased in defiance. Dracula struck, Adrian drew his sword, and there was blood. The battle that followed was brief, the young dhampir easily overpowered by their sire. Seras' breath caught as Dracula tore into him and raised his hand for the blow that would surely finish him off.

But something stayed Father's hand. He couldn't do it. In the end, he couldn't bring himself to kill Adrian.

Her brother hesitated, staring fearfully up at the man they had both loved, then he shifted into his bat form at the last minute and fled into the night. The Mirror of Fate flashed again and then showed her the image of her brother all but dragging himself into the hidden doorway at the back of a crypt. A crypt she recognized. "Gresit…all this time, he was under Gresit…"

"He must've enacted a series of self-sustaining warding spells," said Pip as they watched Adrian's image pull itself into the stone coffin in the deepest part of the keep. The convalescence chamber, Seras thought. Designed for the recuperation of critically wounded vampires. "To keep his father from finding him through an ordinary distance mirror while he slept."

She nodded. "And fogging anyone's memory of it…I never even considered Gresit, even though I helped him build…."

"But this doesn't look like the Gresit keep's library. Where is he?" Pip asked as the Mirror let the image fade and returned to her brother standing before the display case of skulls.

"I…" Seras trailed off as she noticed Adrian wasn't alone. There were two people, humans by the look of them, standing with her brother: a young woman wearing the blue robes of a Speaker and a dark-haired man who had the look of a hired soldier. Or so he appeared to Seras. He carried a scabbard, but it was empty, and she could see a number of throwing knives on his person. Who were these two, she wondered as she brushed her thumb across her eyes. Friends of Adrian? He had always been on friendlier terms with his mother's people, although—Seras froze. The 'mercenary' had turned and she was suddenly aware of the heraldic device on his clothes. A cursed sigil that had haunted, entertained, terrorized, annoyed, and captivated her all through her immortal life.

"Seras," Pip's tone was tense.

"I see it." Narrowing her eyes, Seras extended her long forefinger and pointed to the image in the mirror. "Show me that man's face. Please."

The mirrow obliged, and she saw the dark-haired man clearly. He had a bitter countenance, one that had known hardship for many years. A face that had learned long ago to blur the lines between survival and morality in an unforgiving world. A world that had bitten back if she were to judge by the angry scar that ran the length of his cheek and scored through his left eye.

"My God."

It couldn't be. The Belmont line had been eradicated when Bishop Maxwell set his mob upon them. Lady Integra and her entire family, even the children, had all been slaughtered. All of them, from Leona who was nearly a grown woman to the newborn infant whose name Seras had never learned. No, it wasn't possible. In all the years since that terrible night, she had never found or heard of a survivor. This man she saw in the mirror had to be another pretender. Or at the very least a distant claimant to the family name, a fool associating himself with a disgraced lineage.

But Seras knew better than that. She'd seen that face before. She'd seen it scowling at her countless times. She knew those eyes. She'd seen the light go out of them when Alexander Belmont breathed his last. When she, in a moment of terror and self-preservation, strangled the life from Levi Belmont with his own whip. When Trevor the Elder died in her arms, a story she had never repeated to another living soul.

Well," Pip's voice cut into her train of thought with a sigh. "You look as though the Mad Belmont himself is back from the dead, so you must be pretty certain. Which one is he then?"

At that, the vampiress shook her head. She didn't know. From his age, he had to be one of Trevor and Integra's grandchildren. Leonel and Arthur had both died in the fall; she'd seen their bodies on the scaffold in Gresit, and they both shared their mother's silver-white hair besides. Anne's boy? No, she remembered Anne's son, one of many Leon Belmonts to occupy the family tree, had succumbed to an illness. As for the others…Seras grit her teeth in frustration. She couldn't remember their names. Damn humans reused them so often. Every generation in the clan had a Leon or Leonel or some variation of that name, and the name Trevor seemed to appear every other year as well. So did Levi and Richard and Simon and—she let the mirror's image fade.

"Well," Pip turned to her. "Adrian lives. Zhere's at least one Belmont still breathing. And I'm willing to wager zhe girl's a Speaker mage. So does zhis change nothing, ma chère? Or everything?"

-0-0-0-

Author's Notes: One thing that bothered me about season two was that mirror. It showed up a few episodes in, was mentioned a few times, and its ultimate purpose in the end was to provide Isaac with an escape. But what is never explained is why it was in the study or why Dracula had it in the first place. It's not the same mirror from the pilot episode; it's too small. And even if it is the same one, what reason could Dracula have in moving it to his study? So I've repurposed it here as the Mirror of Fate, a reference to the video game (though non-canon) and the mysterious (and not so sinister) object Seras has been on the hunt for.

On the names here, yes, it was insanely common for medieval family to recycle names over and over to keep the memory of their ancestors alive. In Medieval England, there were three King Henry's in a row, all fathers and sons. Since the historical Vlad Dracula's father was named Vlad Dracul, it's safe to assume the custom also extended to Eastern Europe and maybe beyond.

Thank you for reading.

I own neither of these series.