This place made his skin crawl.

Father Alexander Anderson wasn't sure why –but he was experienced enough a hunter to listen to his instincts, and right now they were screaming at him that something was wrong. He cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders as he stared grimly up at the weather-stained tower of the lighthouse, hearing waves lap the shore behind him. Everything was grey in the light of the late afternoon sun: iron-grey waves flowing against the silvery sand and dark, looming rocks; grey clouds swirling through the sky and covering the world in a gloomy haze; a thin and threadbare carpet of dying grey grass; and above it all, that mildewed and lichen-spotted grey tower with its whitewashing all gone to grey with time.

It was a depressing, melancholy sight, and that was before you factored in his unease and the house that bulked at the base of the lighthouse tower, with sagging shingles and a few cracked windows that gaped like mouths in the stained wood. Taken all together, and Alexander was never more sure in his life that he was about to utterly hate his next job.

Still, he was but a tool in the hands of God, and after a long, resigned sigh, the paladin stepped forward, his feet crunching on the shingle. Mere distaste had never stopped him from finishing an execution before, and he wasn't about to let it make him shy away now. He was not so weak as that. A true warrior of God would step forth into the darkness whatever the darkness may entail, be that filth or temptation or a thousand different blades, and Alexander was nothing if not loyal to his cause.

The ragged island didn't provide a lot of cover, since there wasn't a piece of plant life that was taller than his knee, but there were plenty of rocks and boulders tumbled about, especially near the shore: easy enough for his target to hide between them, especially since witches did not have the same vulnerability to running water as the undead did.

Speaking of which, Alexander had to wonder at the lack of Hellsing forces –or evidence thereof, since his boat was the only one at the half-rotten quay that stuck out like a single crumbling tooth from the shallowest part of the bay. Hellsing had a tendency to poke their noses into everyplace that didn't concern them, especially in the territories butting up against their backyard. It was one of the reasons that Alexander was just about the only agent to volunteer for Irish missions now –everyone else was leery of the chance of encountering Alucard, even if the Hellsing woman kept his leash tight enough that the damn vampire was usually only found near the dematerialized zone in the north.

It was probably not a flattering reflection on him that he volunteered for these missions precisely because of the chance of running into Alucard, but Alexander couldn't help himself. He had been forced into a retreat at Badrick, a shameful and galling retreat, and he need to rub out that humiliation with all speed. At the very least, if he couldn't kill the bastard immediately, he needed to level the scales by forcing Alucard into a retreat of his own on a mission, to redress the balance of wounded pride.

Pride may be the greatest sin of them all, but Alexander had never claimed to be pure. He knew what he was, and he faced his duty unflinchingly because of it.

Speaking of which…

His senses were drawn tight, vibrating on a hair trigger as he waited for that ineffable something that gave him such unease to make its appearance, and as Alexander's feet crunched onto the beginning of the winding stairs that curled upwards from the docks, cut into the stone and sand, his awareness twinged. An almost-literal ripple against the edge of his senses, a slosh of water that was out of tune with the sound of the waves that he had automatically memorized the moment he sent foot on shore.

Bayonets shot into his hands as he whirled back towards the water's edge, throwing one as he drew it with incredible force towards the source of the sound. The shining steel blade sunk into and through the massive, wrist-thick tentacle that had speared out of the water towards him with that same innocuous slosh, and Alexander heard a gurgling rumble deep below as the writhing limb reeled back, like a thousand barrels of air had burst a mile below the surface.

The beach erupted with more tentacles as whatever beast that owned them roared.

Alexander roared back, more blades springing to his hands as he summoned them and threw. They sliced into or clattered against the thrashing forest of limbs, and he called more into his hands, settling his feet on the rocky sand as he began to lash out around him. The meat of the creature was tough, gouging under his blades rather than letting him sever those squirming tentacles whenever they flicked close to him. Ichor splashed the beach in every direction, but wherever one limb writhed back, another lashed forward to take its place, or slid further out of the water as the wounded part of the tentacle arched high into the air, presumably out of his reach. Alexander was surrounded by a thrashing nest of heavy, slimy limbs, all flailing at him with the same purpose: to crush his body and kill him.

Naturally, he was unbowed.

As he viciously wounded and marked the creature for every limb it dared to swing at him, Alexander felt his way backwards, moving step by careful step as he advanced up the thin stone stairs, away from the beach and towards the center of the island. It didn't matter if this kraken –he guessed kraken, though Ireland was ordinarily a bit too far south for them– was of the colossal sort that could swallow ships whole: it could not move on land, and could not reach him if he moved far enough away from the shore.

Guessing from the width and length of the tentacles being hurled at him, thrashing against the boulders on every side and hammering down against the sand as the creature blindly struck at him, Alexander would say that it was fairly young, an adolescent. Krakens were made by casting dark magic upon ordinary seagoing creatures like octopus and squid, making them grow larger, fiercer, and on occasion, sprout more limbs. Depending on the magic cast upon them, they had other attributes, but this kraken –probably once a giant squid, if Alexander was seeing the flailing limbs correctly– had a mantle only about fifty feet long, which meant that its growing period under the unnatural influence cast upon it had probably lasted less than a month. It hadn't had enough time to fully mutate into whatever it was meant to become, though given the density and quantity of the tentacles, Alexander was willing to bet it was meant to have a protective skin and that whoever had enchanted the poor animal had also given it extra limbs.

Abhorrent.

Still, he would have to whittle its mass of tentacles down –almost literally– before he could kill the creature, and Alexander was not arrogant enough to think that he could do that when he was anything but at the edge of the kraken's range. Given how it had grown, that was probably several hundred feet away, which meant that he had a lot of work cut out for him.

Still, he kept climbing backwards, leading with one foot even as he hacked and slashed at the tentacles flailing mindlessly around him. Unlike most predators –which generally included krakens even after their transformation– who would retreat once their would-be prey had shown that it could defend itself, this monster was still attacking, even when he sliced deep into those writhing trunks and thick gallops of ichor splashed like rain onto the rocks around him. That argued that whoever had made this beast was still controlling it, and had identified him as a threat to be neutralized or destroyed.

That was fine with him. It would save Alexander the trouble of hunting down the perpetrator afterwards.

As he crested the top of the hill and started edging backwards through the sparse grey grass, still ducking the occasional errant limb as he sliced at any others he couldn't dodge, Alexander heard another deep rumble from beneath the surface, and with one last vicious lash in his direction, the tenacles began to recede. He hadn't cleared the thing's range –really, he'd probably barely gotten halfway through it, which meant that this was yet another proof that the kraken's master was still very much alive and well.

Alexander watched as the beast's mottled limbs slid back into the ocean, dragging snakelike trails through the sandy beach, and the vast, dark shape within the bay heaved itself up –or down, rather, and swam silently away, until even that vague outline beneath the surface was blurred. He waited several moments more, his bayonets streaked with slime and the odd ichor that served the beast for blood, prepared for another attack to be forthcoming.

When about a minute had passed in neutral silence except for the distant squawking of seabirds and the rush of waves on shore, Alexander sighed and withdrew one bayonet, reaching up to touch his cross. He could very well guess what the kraken's master had wanted, as he looked morosely at the shattered remnants of the dock and his only transportation off the island.

"'There go the ships: there is that leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein.'" he murmured.

Still, it wasn't like he was trapped and helpless. His opponent may have him temporarily blocked on the island, unable to so much as rig up a raft for fear of the kraken lurking about, but Alexander could and would kill it, and then its master, and then it was really only a matter of time before he walked away. He was not stuck, only...delayed.

Still, he should probably make sure that he could actually make a signal. The lighthouse's abrupt cessation of duties had been what had called Iscariot and him through Iscariot to this island, and while Alexander had little to no hope that the original operators would still be here –or alive if they were– he had to assume that their equipment still worked, or at least was only partially damaged. If it was, well, it would only take a matter of hours once he'd finished here to signal someone to come retrieve him, since the lighthouse beginning to work again would, perforce, naturally call attention.

So thinking, Alexander finally turned his back on the ocean –carefully, and warily, keeping most of his attention still attuned to it– and began hiking up to the lighthouse and the crumbling house huddled against its base. He kept all his senses peeled for more trouble, but the island was surprisingly quiet. Just those few calling seagulls, and the long hush of waves breaking against the rocks and land. With the kraken's retreat, things seemed to have settled, but Alexander by no means was taking that for granted. He had still been well within the kraken's range when it had stopped, and it would only have stopped at the order of the one who had made it.

Someone was planning something.

Perhaps, under those circumstances, it wasn't the wisest of things to immediately head for the only human-made structure within miles, since that was something even a newborn would expect of him, but, well, Alexander didn't care. He was more than strong and skilled enough to deal with any traps that his foe was creating, and in a sense, he welcomed them to try. Smashing through barriers and reducing an arrogant monster's confidence to quailing terror was fun.

Besides, his boat had been reduced to kindling, so even if there wasn't a sea-going abomination lurking beneath the waves, Alexander would need to get help in order to leave the island.

He noticed several more suspicious irregularities as he got closer to the buildings, finally out of reach of the beast and therefore able to devote most of his attention forward. The small house at the base of the lighthouse tower, probably where the crew lived and slept when not on duty, was falling apart, which wasn't so odd until he considered the fact that the island had been abandoned less than two months ago, and the tower itself was in pristine condition –well, relatively pristine for an older building at the edge of the sea, anyways.

There was one very easy conclusion to draw from this. Whatever monster or mage that had descended on this island had no use for the building, leaving it to molder after they had killed or driven away the original workers, but they were still using the tower. What for? Alexander had no idea, but he fully intended to find out.

Circling around the base of both buildings all but confirmed his suspicion. Saltwater air and ocean storms were not kind to human habitation, but the wood that made up the modest house was mildewed and only beginning to rot: parts of it were still wholesome, albeit soaked and softened with water. The panes of broken glass seemed like they had been broken in a struggle, a struggle which Alexander did not need to speculate on, given the rusty splotches of dried blood that stained some of the intact shards. The sagging roof appeared to be quite recent: the splinters of the remaining shingles had weathered to a lighter color than the wood of the walls. Like a corpse whose skin was started to soften and slough off its flesh, the bones of the building were still whole.

The lighthouse was different.

Built of stones bleached to shine an even greater light through the darkness, the pure spire had gone off-white in its long years of service, with damp casting grey patches upon its rounded sides. The plaster and brickwork was still complete, though, and Alexander found his eyes narrowing as he prowled slowly around the base, looking up at the many-windowed peak in the clouds. His acute senses could catch a faintest thrum, like the air around him was pulsing gently with distortion. A less experienced man, a man who was not a hunter of all the things that killed in the dark, might dismiss the feeling as the vibrations from the powerful searchlight from the tower, but Alexander knew better. The searchlight had been switched off, and dark magic seethed and bulked within the ivory tower.

Alexander's duty was clear, and he flicked the bayonet he had not withdrawn even after all this time, flinging off the last few strands of gunk. Without further ado, he noted the hinges on the exterior door of the lighthouse and slammed his foot against the wood, flinging it open with great force. As he expected, the interior of the tower was dim and smoky, as though a great fire had been lit, with lines of sullen force crawling up the walls in blasphemous and arcane letters.

"'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.'" Alexander muttered under his breath, summoning another blade and clashing the two bayonets together in the makeshift form of a cross. Without further ado, he stepped into the room –and as he had more than half expected, the entire place exploded in revolt.

The sigils on the walls flared and burned red, red as blood, and wood burst forth from every direction, the very walls coming alive and twisting towards him in fibrous vines. Jagged thorns of splintered wood rose to gouge and stab at him as Alexander brandished his bayonets to defend himself and swung through the air. Cutting off the tip of the vines before they reached him did no good, however: splinters flew in every direction as the severed growth burst, tearing through his clothes and landing more cuts on his skin. In a very few moments, Alexander guessed, they would have taken any ordinary human and bound him into a rasping, saw-toothed cocoon, pricking his skin with a thousand splinters to bring out even more blood as they wrapped around him in a parasitic web and bled their prey dry.

Alexander, however, was no ordinary human. The will of God followed him, and he exercised that will as the Bible tucked into an inside pocket of his cassock flew open, pages of holy writ ripping themselves from the spine and whirling outwards as a golden glow filled the room, directly countering the sullen red and clinging darkness of the black magic and its vines.

Within a few seconds, it was over –but over for the magic, and not for him, as stinging cuts faded and healed all over his body, leaving only a few speckles of blood behind on his torn clothes as Alexander watched his Bible pages plaster themselves against the room, forcing the dark magic to shrink back, forcing the splintery vines to meld together and flatten as they were pressed back into the walls and floor and ceiling. A few seconds was all it took, and instead of standing in a thorny hellscape of foul magic and thrashing vines, Alexander was left standing in a plain and ordinary wooden room at the base of the tower, small and circular, with a metal-and-stone staircase spiraling tightly upwards on the right-hand wall.

His pages still glowed as the reflected sheen of their blessing skated over the wall, holding the curse back like a shimmering bubble, and Alexander stepped closer, wanting to examine what had attacked him. Beneath the gold of his ward, the corrupted magic still pulsed angrily, a faint buzz at the edge of his hearing, a sharp craving for blood and death and pain that was whispered into the ether.

How odd.

Krakens could be grown by using any number of dark rituals, but this…this looked it was fueled like vampire blood.

The blood of the undead was a uniquely alchemic substance, after all, bringing unholy life into natural death for humans –and if properly harnessed and applied, it could do much the same in other ways. By carefully feeding vampiric blood to a living plant, you created a mandrake, a powerful ingredient for witch's spells. By applying that same blood to dead wood, however, wood that had been cut from a tree…

Alexander smoothed a hand over the wall, frowning at the two layers of magic. Well, with the proper rituals, you could use vampire blood as a shortcut to animating anything that was dead. Wood did fall into that category, but the amount of power that one would need to animate something so paltry on such a large scale…it was massive. And a waste, too –such a curse wasn't correspondingly powerful to its difficulty. Really, these vines were an obstacle to him, and no doubt exceedingly deadly to an unprepared human, but little more than that. Any hunter with access to wards or protective magic could beat them.

Defenses like these weren't worth the expenditure of such a great amount of magic, especially when you considered the fact that vampires and witches rarely saw eye-to-eye, and actually getting that blood was fraught with difficulty. Only the most idiotic fledgling would be willing to give a witch their blood and thus a direct line to themselves and their power, and the potency of a vampire's blood increased with age. This magic, if Alexander was reading the signs correctly as he looked up the staircase to the next level, was probably cast with more blood than one vampire could provide. Why bother wasting it on such an inefficient trap?

He growled out a sigh as he ascended to the staircase, already more than tired of this farce. Still, if he wanted answers, they would likely be at the top. Unsurprisingly, another thorny, splintery growth rushed at him as soon as Alexander cleared the first level, and he groaned again, chopping it away with a flick of one bayonet as he summoned his wards again. This was going to be a real pain in the ass.

Laboriously, the paladin began to claw his way up the tower, chopping through rank after rank of the angry, writhing extensions of wood with all the fear of an exasperated gardener, slowly coating the whole place in his wards as he went, flattening the walls and ceiling back into their proper place. He began to notice, though, that there were several bundles that stood proof against his wards, coiling black and strong like frozen smoke as they plunged into the floor and curled up along the wall, piercing through the ceiling like roots. They were roots, if he was any judge, feeding and carrying this massive, cumbersome spell from one floor to the next.

He also passed bundles, in places, sad lumps of tightly-bound wood where the withered, despairing hand and arm of some desiccated crew member lolled limply out, frozen mid-escape. The splinters of the vampiric wood were dug deep into their bodies, and Alexander noticed with some distaste that they had a tendency to start with the eyes. It reminded him of the stories that he grudgingly told the orphans, the Grimm's fairytales that they all clamored for.

Grim, indeed. Maidens who lured their would-be rescuers to grief, the prince that plunged from Rapunzel's tower and put his eyes out on the thorns that caught him, the children that Sleeping Beauty bore without her consent. The old stories were the most violent, even if he kept to the most watered-down versions for his children to enjoy.

Still, this was almost perfunctory, even if Alexander was growing increasingly concerned that the light and the horn at the top of the tower wouldn't be working when he finally clawed his way up there. Too much of the tower had been overrun by black magic, and this all had to be coming from something, some ritual chamber, some central heart from which these veins pulsed. Logic dictated it would either by at the top or at the bottom of the tower, and it seemed useless to invest so much magic to infest the entire place if the source was beneath the tower itself.

Then again, Alexander was not exactly impressed with the intelligence his opponent had displayed thus far…

The thrashing vines tipped with splintery thorns were getting stronger, though, as he warded and shoved and hacked and sliced his way up the slowly spiraling steps, and the darker veins of magic than ran down the tower walls were getting thicker, more numerous. The last slog was the hardest, of course, not only because the gap between the last floor and the half-open casement where the lighthouse beam was stored was longer, but also because the vines were flailing at him blindly, frantically, several growths slipping beneath his whirling Bible pages to lash against his arms, his shoulders, his face, ripping open skin that soon sealed as droplets of bright red blood fell to the stone and metal steps that were the only solid things in this mayhem of writhing thickets.

Step by step, ward by ward, slice by slice, Alexander forced his way upwards as a line of blood spots gradually bloomed behind him, trailing after his feet like rose petals thrown after an advancing monarch. His regeneration sealed the wounds that the wood tore into him quickly, but he could not stop his blood from dripping –nor could he afford to split his attention to wipe it away, since the splintery thorns were thrown at him constantly from every angle except, marginally, "behind."

At last, every piece of the curse –except that which waited behind the final door– was taken care of, and regenerator or not, Alexander had to wait a moment, panting, as the golden sheen of his wards skated dreamily over the walls and the ceiling around that trapdoor –the door that led into the room where the lamp was kept. Thick, blackened vines –or perhaps, it would be more accurate to call them veins– spread out from that trapdoor on every side, sinking into the walls of the lighthouse and climbing and twisting steadily downwards, to where they embedded themselves in the distant floor of the level below. Several growths terminated early, burying themselves into the walls around Alexander as they fueled the curse here, which pulsed with a brighter sullen glow beneath his wards.

Despite their smoke-like appearance, these veins branching out from the center of the curse were solid to the touch, and Alexander eyed the door warily as he rested with one hand on the thankfully-metal banister, mentally rearranging his options. The curse looked like it grew outwards from within the lantern room, so it wouldn't be too hard to shove open the door, but he had no idea what waited inside, and his holy power had been spread somewhat thin in order to curb the magic spread over the entire structure.

Still, as a servant of God, his duty was clear.

Alexander straightened up and climbed the last few steps, seizing the handle of the trapdoor in one hand and shoving upwards with all his strength. He kept one blade ready in his hand as he did, the edge gleaming sharply as he rushed into the topmost part of the tower. No more thorny obstacles grew to greet him, no more wooden vines flailed at him with their splinters: because the room was entirely overtaken. A thick clot of veins tangled and twisted together on the center of the floor, where the lamp had been kept, steadily drawing on what was inside to fuel the dark magic that had been funneled through every level of the tower. Their traceries spilled down, creating an inky river of roots too dense to pick apart as they sank down through the trapdoor, like frozen river weeds. Alexander's first move, when he finally climbed fully into the room, was to step off of their hard and bumpy surface.

The room felt curiously open and simultaneously far too tight –a dichotomy born of the glass surrounding Alexander on every side that let him see far, far into the distance, and yet pressed in on him at the same time, latticed together in a circle that was probably less than ten or fifteen feet in diameter. Weak grey light shone in on Alexander from every side, the sun almost entirely choked out by the thick carpet of clouds, but his attention was focused on what was on the ground. The oblong shape surrounded by those dark tendrils told him that whatever vampire the witch had caught was probably still here, being leeched off in their turn as their blood was funneled down to the magic that was bound tightly into the wood of the lighthouse's interior lining.

Interesting.

Alexander summoned the strongest wards he could muster, papering them about the room as several pages of the holy writ overlaid one another and a strong, shimmering glow filled the room with a faux sort of sunlight. What he was about to do was incredibly risky, but at the same time, it was the quickest way to get rid of the curse.

He knelt down and began hacking at the roots with his bayonet, prying them free of the vampire they had trapped. As expected, they didn't like that, clinging harder onto the victim as Alexander heard a faint snap of fracturing bones, but he was undeterred. The quickest way to end this power was to kill the vampire responsible, and as his blade clattered and bit at the vines, Alexander's guess was confirmed –they were too strong for him to push his bayonet through and stab the vampire's heart. While cocooning the monster and draining it dry, they also protected it.

Cursing under his breath as he exposed the vampire's midsection and started working his way up, the paladin hacked and chipped at the obstinate vines, pulling them away with dry cracks and snaps, like he was breaking winter branches. He let the debris fall onto his wards, keeping a sharp eye out for any further movement, but the hollow black roots were as still and dead as the vegetation they marginally resembled.

The tower wasn't still, though. Alexander heard low, creaking groans and felt a subtle thrumming grow in power beneath his feet, like the stirring of a dragon quick to anger. If not for his wards that coated the interior of the tower in a protective halo, the thorny vines would be thrashing madly right now, like a thicket under the full gale of a hurricane as their splintery edges formed and scraped and flattened wildly against the power he had set up as a barrier. Curses were not sentient as such, but this one certainly "knew" what he was doing, and did not like it one bit.

Too bad for the curse, and even worse for the master that controlled it. Alexander kept ripping the black, calcified tubes away, leaving their sharp and hungry tips buried in the vampire they had stolen from. What did he care? He was going to kill the damn beast anyway, as soon as he had a clear shot: that was what he was clearing the vines away for. By removing all of the parasitic veins that were sucking the vampire's power away, Alexander could lift the creature up, check for any further attachments when the undead monster was not directly touching the veins, and then kill it. Simple. Easy.

Cracking and ripping away the last of the growths that covered the victim's face, Alexander paused in recognition. Suddenly, a lot of things started making sense: the apparent wastefulness of using so much blood to fuel such a throwaway spell, the lack of Hellsing interference, and finally, the disproportionate amount of power that had fueled the magic to begin with.

Alucard.

It was Alucard hanging from those bony growths, pale as death and with several more veins still plunging into his body, clinging tenaciously to their prey. The vampire's bright red eyes were open, though, shining like recently spilled blood as they instantly focused on the paladin's face, and even as Alexander recognized the situation for what it was, Alucard was lunging for him, jaw agape.


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