A/N- Three more updates to go! And it might make you laugh to know that I finally learned how to spell "Chauve-Souris" without having to look it up, haha. Also, I make a mention of the Innocence Devils later in this chapter…and I know there is one more type than the number I give. But I just didn't feature the Pumpkin being very useful to the scene at hand.
Chapter 23- Goals
Isaac and Ria were careful not to make eye-contact with one another as they both moved to stand in front of the glowing crimson door. Sara stood just behind Ria, while Dracula had taken up the position right in front of the doorknob, his hand poised to turn it. He looked over at Ria and the forgemaster with a brow arched at the way each were utterly occupied with determinately not looking at the other in a way that was terribly obvious.
"Are we all quite ready for this? There's no way of knowing what lies beyond this door. We need to be focused," Dracula said.
Both Isaac and Ria snapped back that they were "quite ready." Behind her, Ria heard Sara sigh. She didn't need to turn around to imagine that the ghost woman was probably shaking her head or rolling her eyes as well. Ria gripped her whip in hand and turned to the vampire king.
"Well? Let's go!" she hissed.
With a curt nod, Dracula gave the doorknob a rough twist and shoved it open. The group flooded inside as the door slammed such behind them. Ria, alone, had jumped at the noise. The rest of her companions pretended not to notice her reaction. Instead, they all looked straight on, focused, at the room before them.
It was cavernous and holey.
Large holes, too dark to see what was inside of them, were placed randomly along the top and bottom of the cave-like room. Isaac stiffened, his hand tightening on the Chauve-Souris. His eyes were darting between each hole, his expression set in a slight snarl.
"I don't like the looks of this," he hissed to no one in particular.
"I second that," Sara murmured, and Ria was sure that only she had heard that.
As one, the group took precisely two steps forward before they stopped again, poised and ready for attack. Ria now found herself staring from hole to hole. She was making a second round when her eyes stopped on the hole right in front of them, closest to the ceiling. She fought against doing a Scooby-Doo-style gulp. Her hands were beginning to ache, she was holding onto the Vampire Killer so tightly—she had sheathed her dagger moments before entering.
"There," she whispered, unable to make her voice go any higher.
She pointed at the hole her eyes had locked on. Emanating from it was a slow and steady hiss, not unlike that of a snake. But it was so much louder than a snake one might encounter in their front yard. Typically, Ria wasn't afraid of snakes. Spiders, parasites, and really big dogs, yes, but she had always been okay with snakes. She had even held one once at a zoo exhibit. But this snake, as Ria was now sure the creature in the hole must be, seemed a hell of a lot bigger than any snake that the majority of humanity knew of.
"Snake," Dracula said, matter-of-factly.
Even Isaac stared at him as if to say, "Well…yeah." The devil forgemaster opened his mouth to actually voice a response when the unmistakable sound—well, unmistakable to anyone who had ever encountered a snake anywhere or had ever seen a snake-related film—of scales against stone came from the hole. The snake was slithering out.
Ria quickly shielded her eyes as Dracula said, "It's giant."
"Is it a basilisk?" Ria asked, her eyes still shut.
"How do you, someone so new to this, know about basilisks?" Isaac asked.
"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The giant spiders were terrifying," she responded.
Ria had still not unshielded her eyes, but she could imagine Isaac raising a brow as he asked, "Who's Harry Potter? And what is the Chamber of Secrets?"
"A children's book that was made into a movie. It was quite good, actually. I caught it one night on a television channel called ABC Family," Dracula explained, before adding, "And, no, it's not a basilisk. It's just your typical magically enhanced snake."
Ria opened her eyes just as the snake went from one hole to another, catching a glimpse of its dark green, scaly body and rattle-less tail as it disappeared once more. She glared up at Dracula.
"Typical?" she growled.
He shrugged. Isaac sighed.
"It's no matter. We're lucky that it doesn't seem to have taken notice of us yet. Perhaps we could just sneak our way around it?" the crimson-haired man whispered.
"And how do you propose we do that, Isaac?" Dracula said, doing a bit of hissing of his own. "Except for the snake's own holes, this room has a desperate lack in hiding spots."
Ria cast her eyes about the room once more, and, as much as she hated to admit it, Dracula was right. There wasn't even a boulder to be seen…which, as she thought about it, seemed strange in a room so…rocky.
"But I think we should try," she said, voicing the second part of her thought aloud.
"I agree. This snake might be out of our league," Sara said.
"Out of my league, Sara?" Dracula smirked.
Ria found herself wishing that a bell or something would go off when she suddenly wasn't the only one able to see Sara anymore. And by the look on Sara's face—a rather sour, puckered look—she was wishing the same thing. Instead of replying, she simply diverted her eyes to the other side of the room. She gestured to a door that Ria had not noticed earlier. It was nestled neatly between two of the snake's holes.
"There. We need to get out that door," Sara said. "Fast."
"I agree," Isaac said.
"But how?" Sara asked, crossing her arms.
"And how, I ask again, do we propose to do so?" Dracula voiced. Apparently Sara had vanished from their sight again.
The whip-bound woman sighed. "I'm really getting tired of this."
"Me too," Ria replied. She waved off Isaac's and Dracula's questioning looks.
"We might just have to make a run for it," Isaac said, shrugging.
"Oh…I have such a bad feeling about this," Ria groaned. "There's no other way?"
"Well, I'm not seeing any. Are you?" Isaac snapped at her.
She glared at him so hard that she was sure that he was going to burst into flames any minute now. When he didn't, she let out a deep, slow breath and shrugged.
"No. I guess not. But Snakey is sure to see us if we just dash along here," Ria noted.
"She's right, Isaac. If we run straight out, we hold no hope," Dracula said. "Perhaps we could try sliding ourselves along the walls?"
"And what about the giant holes?" Isaac asked.
"We avoid them as best as possible."
"But they're everywhere!"
"It's the only way, Isaac," Ria said gently, causing the crimson-haired to stare at her rather strangely.
He blinked once, obviously trying to drum up an argument. When he could think of none, he nodded.
"Then what are we waiting for?" Dracula asked, stepping into the lead.
The other two—three, with Sara, although being a ghost often had its advantages, such as being in a situation like the present one—fell into a single file line behind the vampire king. They moved almost as one, Dracula taking a silent step, followed by Isaac's step, then Ria's, then Sara's. Ria was acutely aware of her own breath, as well as Isaac, being that they were the only two of the group that had breath. Ria tried holding her breath, but then that made Isaac's sound so loud to her that it seemed to pound inside her ears. So she released hers, only to shake with fear that the snake could hear her. Halfway across the room, the group froze. The slow slither of the snake about to emerge filled the cave-like room.
"What now?" Ria asked, trying to keep all the panic out of her voice.
Isaac withdrew the Chauve-Souris from his back and held it, ready to strike. She looked to Dracula, who had tensed. She groaned.
"Not again. Not this thing," she said, holding the Vampire Killer taunt.
It happened fast. The sound of movement stopped, and the group of mismatched companions held perfectly still, leaving the first move to the snake. They saw its open, void-like mouth first.
"It's striking!" Sara shouted as the group split down the middle, Ria and Sara to the left, and Isaac and Dracula to the right.
And strike it did. The snake slammed it open jaws into the rock where Ria and Isaac had stood only moments earlier. It withdrew and hissed, its mile-long, forked, red tongue flickering quickly as it drew itself back inside.
"We still have to make it to the door! We can't beat this thing!" Isaac shouted, his eyes locking with Ria's.
"Then we better hurry," Dracula said, pointing towards the exit.
Ria felt her heart speed up to triple its normal speed when she saw what it was that the vampire king was talking about. Over the door that would lead the group onward, a large, thick gray slab of rock was lowering, slowly, ready to block them inside with the monster snake. Ria gasped, but found herself cutting it short as the snake reared itself up to strike again.
"To the door, now!" Ria shouted, managing a roll that took her just underneath the snake as struck again.
Her eyes grew to the size of saucers as she saw acid-green venom issue down the rocks where the snake had sunk in its teeth. And it didn't help her shock or panic to watch it remove its fangs from the rock just as easily as it might have removed them from something the same consistency as a cotton ball. She rolled again as the snake slithered into another one of its holes, trying to move closer to its victims. The wall, she noticed, was closing a bit faster now. And Ria was still nowhere near close enough to the rest of her group.
Dracula shot a fireball at the snake as it moved to strike Ria from behind, and it roared—Ria did not know that snakes could roar, but apparently magically enhanced, giant snakes did—and reared back, retreating momentarily into its new hidey-hole. Dracula then took his moment to duck through the nearly half-closed doorway. Isaac wasn't far behind the vampire king, but instead of disappearing beyond the doorway, he paused, turned, and held out a hand to Ria.
"Come on! Run, Adriana!" he shouted as the snake made its reappearance.
Ria arrived at Isaac just as the door made it pass its halfway mark. It was now only big enough for a single person to slide through. The crimson-haired devil forger tugged at Ria's arm, but she did not move. Sara stared at her.
"What are you doing?" she all but screeched at her trainee. "Follow him through the door!"
"There's not time," Ria said, so calmly that it surprised even her.
The door was closing faster still. Soon, no one would be able to fit through. Ria reached up, gripping Isaac by his shoulders.
"What are you doing?" Isaac echoed Sara's question as Ria threw all her weight into him and shoved downward and forward.
Isaac slid under the wall, with a few inches to spare, and Ria saw the alarm in his eyes as she peeked under the door and shouted, "Take care of my mother! That's an order!"
And the stone wall slammed down as Isaac lay beyond, shouting Ria's name in vain.
……………………
Isaac and Dracula both stared at the wall, listening to the crashing of the snake slamming its body around in the room beyond, presumably striking over and over again at Ria. Isaac still found himself laying on the icy cold stone floor, unable to move or tear his eyes away from the wall barring Dracula and himself from the vampire hunter and her ghostly friend beyond.
Ria was dead. Surely she had to be. There was no way in this hell that she could survive something as purely strength driven as that snake. Not with the minimal amount of training the girl had had. And without Ria…Walter had won. Without her…Isaac was free of at least one blood bond.
The thought hit him like a ton of bricks. He looked up and saw Dracula, one of many of his masters, staring coldly at the stone wall. If the blood bond with Ria was now nullified…or if not now, then soon, whenever the snake…won…Walter's orders to destroy Dracula would take precedence once more. Isaac pushed himself to his feet, his eyes gluing themselves back to the stone wall.
"We're wasting time," Dracula said suddenly. "And that girl has foolishly thrown her life away for reasons that I cannot fathom. Come, Isaac. We must continue our way to Walter."
Dracula swept his cape around, ready to do just that. But Isaac did not move, a circle of light forming around him.
"I can't. I must…return to my charge…in case…"
But he said no more to Dracula, nor did he wait for the vampire king to respond. He simply let the light surround him…and take him away.
…………………
Sophy sat with her legs dangling out of the cage and her hands gripping its bars, unafraid of the strange creatures—Innocence Devils, Isaac had called them—surrounding her. She had already watched as they fought off several lesser creatures, destroying them so that they might protect her. There were five different types—as far as she could tell—and they had formed a circle around her cage, all facing away from her. She had grown accustomed to these creatures, because, to her, they meant only one thing: Isaac was away, aiding Ria. And to Sophy, that was all that mattered.
A sudden bright flash of light, and Isaac now stood before her. She quickly pulled her legs back within the cage and stood, eager to question him on her daughter's condition within this hellish castle. But once she saw his face, hers paled.
It was drawn tight, like someone who had done an immense amount of grieving and could do no more…yet there was still so much more to do. His eyes were downturned, away from hers, and they would not rise to meet hers, no matter how much she silently willed them to. With a wave of his hand—nonchalantly, but not quite like he didn't care…just more like he wasn't paying attention to the task at hand—his Innocence Devils vanished, and Sophy and he were left in the coliseum room alone.
"Isaac?" she questioned quietly.
Only then did his eyes meet hers. And there were no words…no words to describe the knowledge and the pain held within them. Sophy knew, without any further explanation, what had happened. She sank to the floor of her cage as Isaac put his back to her. She pressed a hand to her mouth, trying to hold in her grief.
"Oh…Ria…"
…………………
Ria was not dead. Of that, Dracula was certain. Foolish, and probably grievously injured, there would be no doubt. But dead…no, that little vampire hunter was alive. He could just feel it. But he had no more time to waste on her. She had served her purpose, getting him this far within the castle. He required her assistance no more.
The exit from the little section of castle that Walter had added was not far away from where Dracula had left Ria to contend with the snake. He emerged inside of Orlox's personal quarters and had blasted his way through the skeleton guards positioned on the initial staircase in no time. Without that pitiful girl and the blood bound Isaac to hinder him, he could not make full use of his power…that that which he had left since having the Crimson Stone stolen from him. The lesser creatures of this castle held no worry for the vampire king.
The door leading to the coliseum from Orlox's spacious quarters was not guarded, as Dracula would have supposed it was going to be, and he entered the blood-scented, battle-powered section of Castlevania with no reservations. The circular center of the section, the middle of which housed the room in with Sophy—and thus Walter—would be in was only a couple of columns over. Dracula blew apart, literally, all the creatures—mostly more skeletons, with more advanced abilities—that fell into his path. In mere moments, he stood, grinning, outside the doors to his destination. With great relish, he threw them open and strode inside, his grin turning into a sneer as he found four pairs of eyes staring, widely, back at him.
End Notes: And…cliffhanger. Sorry for the long wait, guys. I just moved into my new apartment, and I haven't got internet as of yet. However, my last semester of college starts back soon and hopefully the whole internet issue will be then rectified. And since I have limited time on the internet until I have internet at the apartment, I'm behind in review replies. Rest assured, I'll get to them just as soon as time allows. Well, please review!
Random Thought: I've recently been playing CV: OoE, and my fiancé has been replaying LoI and CoD…and from watching both, I've noticed something…ever realized that there is ALWAYS a breeze in a Castlevania game, as of late? I mean, Leon, Hector, Shanoa…they can all be standing still in a place that probably shouldn't have a breeze…and there's a breeze. It's always windy in CV game…