The Reality of Dreams and Nightmares

Chapter I: Under the Glass Moon

Two sets of eyes were visible in the darkness of this night, each throwing off their own moon's reflection. On pair was wide and observing, visible in the gaps of the dying tree. The other pair lay just below, these were piercing and still. Dangerous and entrancing. These were the eyes of a vampire, these were the eyes Alucard.

Behind his eyes his mind was being torn by thoughts to the point where he thought his skull might crack from the pounding war in his mind. One army fought for that of life, of self-preservation. This side was his will to survive, and their numbers were dwindling. Standing no chance against the powerful arms of annihilation, termination, suicide.

He thought he might stand on this hill, beneath this tree, until a new day was born. Allow the sun to slowly sear his flesh, cook his muscle, and turn his bone to ash. The pain would be extraordinary. But it would still yet be a far cry from the pain he felt now.

He existed for one sole purpose, and that was to continue the constant battle between father and son. And to be perfectly honest, he grew tired of it. He no longer cared for the fate of man. How could he when he no longer cared for the fate of himself? The two humans he had fought for, struggled for, were gone. His two most precious teachers, only memories.

His mother was now only a faint light to him. He would sit on countless nights like these trying to fan that flame, make her image yet more brilliant, more radiant as he could remember it being when he was but a small child. But the more he tried, the deeper that void of losing her became. But he could still yet recall her voice, always loving, always educating. His mother had taught him to love man. Sonia had taught him to love.

The Belmonts. A long bloodline of vampire hunters from as far back as anyone could trace. Their name became legendary, but also feared. They possessed something of unnatural abilities and people did not care for these Belmonts because people fear what they do not understand. One after the other, each Belmont stood against darkness and triumphed with the famed whip held high.

Alucard knew the Belmonts well. He had fought alongside a good number of them. The most recent being Richter, who he had saved from the curse of Shaft. He admired the Belmonts for their strength and for their courage, but their name and their blood meant nothing to him. The Belmonts commanded respect by transcending the nature of humans, and this they got from Alucard, but he took no liking to the family.

However, if one would be so inclined to trace back the origins of the Belmonts, they would find one Belmont by the name of Sonia. She had emerged hundreds of years after the first of the slayers and, like so many other Belmonts, took whip in hand and stormed Dracula's castle. And this was one Belmont that Alucard had cared for. Still cared for.

Sonia Belmont, their bloodlines had separated them, their origins pitting them against each other. But they both had a common goal, to destroy the monster that was Dracula. And that they did.

Alucard's eyes grew hot with fresh tears as he recalled her expression when he had left her standing in the ruins of Dracula's Castle. She had looked so sad, wearing an mask of despair that could break an army. Her hand had been extended towards his retreating body, her voice breaking as she choked out his name, and the tears that shimmered in the rising sun's light.

But that certainly hadn't been the last time he laid eyes on her. From that day forth he kept a constant eye on her from every corner's shadow. He watched her change, and watched her age. Every evening she would return where the castle had stood and wait for him to return to her. How desperately and wanted to. How painful it was to resist taking her into his arms. But he did resist, but she never stopped returning there. Not even when her life was disappearing from her once vivid face.

Sonia had taken ill not long after the birth of her son. And every day for the years that followed she grew weaker. One evening he watched this ghost of a woman, now a gnarled skeleton, crawl the last few feet of her long trek to the very place she had stood the day Alucard left her. He heard her use the last of her energy to barely push his name from her withered lips, and then she was dead. And with her death, along died Alucard.

The Alucard that now stood on this hill was nothing but a mindless shell. He wandered with no destination, thought with no emotion. The only thing that broke him from this, brought little life into his animated body was thoughts of her, thoughts of Sonia. And these he tried so desperately to hold onto, despite it devouring him inside. And this is what it had brought him to, his sword at his throat, his hand clenched tight around the hilt.

His eyes slid closed and two flames were extinguished. One pair still flickered in the night, and now they broke from the branches of the tree and the two embers fell towards Alucard.

Alucard heard the crack of branches and the loud shriek that followed, which he swore was enough to shatter the glass moon. His sword already in a drawing stroke across his neck, he turned around and pulled the steel from his vein in time to separate the two lighted orbs.

He bent down to examine and found his hand clutching a handful of bloodied feathers. The thing which he had easily split in half like an axe to a log was an owl. His hand went to his throat and he felt a small canal in his skin. He was no longer sure whether his scarlet stained hands were from the bird or from his neck. But he found a realization more troubling to him than whether or not he had done any damage. For what purpose had the bird attacked? He knew of only one other place of where he was forced to cut a bird from the air, and he knew only one reason as to why. The influence of something sinister.