Chapter 8: The Quick Route

Disclaimer: I do not own Castlevania.

After the departure of the dhampire son of Dracula, Simon Belmont looked to the vampire huntress that he was working with to bring an end to the evil schemes of evil men, and she just shrugged as to what to do. There really was no alternate choice besides going all the way back to the town from whence they had came, but it would be just like walking ahead and they had a little girl to save. Without a horse to ride on, the two enemies of the night walked onto the path that had been there as a shortcut to the family and by looking at the map, Simon could tell that Alucard had never trusted either of them fully because he hadn't given them the short path, he only told them the directions of the scenic route. Then again, Simon always kept his left hand to his sword because he had Alucard along with him so neither was trusting the other and Sonia had to depend on the other because they seemed to have all the answers that she needed to get what she wanted. From the path of the forest, the two made their way to a clearing that had an ominous stench to it that was making them gag slightly from the smell.

"What could be that odious stench," asked Simon between gasping for nice clean air or at least air that didn't smell like a latrine.

It was just a little too much for any normal mortal to bear by neither hunter nor huntress were normal and they were more or less on the same level of power as the things they hunted. Simon remembered that the Belmonts had been forced out of Transylvania because of that, but at the same time they were called back to once again take up their calling and destroy Dracula. Most of the political enemies of the Belmonts were silence after Trevor Belmont's defeat of Dracula, but those who wouldn't remain silent started to side themselves with the very same evil that they feared the Belmonts would become. Other than a few assassination attempts, the worst thing they had ever done was summon Dracula into this world with the blood of an innocent maiden. The master of the domain of the night was a ruler who made sure that only he could do grand things and if such a thing were to happen that would challenge Dracula's position as the supreme evil being then they would deliver the message to whoever was in charge of the Belmont clan or a nearby Belmont.

"I believe that we must be near to dead man's swamp by the smell of it," replied Sonia as she started to choke on the foul air and Simon quickly put a handkerchief to her face to make sure that she would be alright.

"I can see why there would be dead men around here, the smell could make a man rot instantly," said Simon with a smirk as he walked towards the source of the smell, knowing it to be the swamp.

"Or maybe the smell is of dead men," said Sonia as she started to back up a bit from the accursed swamp that threatened to swallow her in a fog of smoke from the corpses of the burned.

"Either way, it lies between us and the place where we want to go so we must venture onward," declared Simon as he walked forward hoping to reassure her with his own sureness of strength, but deep down inside he was getting a since of dread for what lied ahead. People are singing songs of your journey and you're getting scared of a ghost story, how pathetic is that? Then again, my life centers around the ghost stories come to life by the evil in the hearts of men.

"I know that, but we must be on our guard for even you are not immortal, Lord Belmont," said Sonia, adding a little bit of sarcasm to the Lord Belmont.

"Despite the notions you are entertaining in your mind, I am not egotistical nor am I so narrow minded that I would consider myself immortal just because I was the one to defeat Dracula. I know my limits and I am only acting like this so you don't panic or anything."

"I am perfectly calm, Simon, I don't scare easily just because I am a female and not a Belmont," replied Sonia as she took a step towards the Dead Man's swamp and as soon as she did so a greenish hand shot up from the murky waters to grab her leg. "Ah, so that's why it smells so bad?"

"More importantly, that's why it's called Dead Man's swamp," said Simon as he took out a vial of holy water and poured it into the swamp, but all it managed to do is make the corpses in the murky water angry as fists shot out of the water with blue burn marks on the back of the hands. "Well I guess that isn't going to work."

"I think that, more importantly, they are coming out now," said Sonia as she backed away from the murky water that was rippling as the corpses of those who died in those accursed waters rose from the murky depths with their hands outstretched to drag whatever travelers had dared to disturb them.

With a flick of his wrist, Simon Belmont sent the whip cracking into the face of an awful looking corpse that was dripping the greenish waters from its beard and the face was immediately blown apart by the fire caused by the power of the whip and the sheer force at which the whip was lashed. The whip struck the other corpse in the chest, blowing a hole into it that caused a foul greenish blood to pour from its chest before it was finished off by a vial of holy water that burned the corpse behind him. Sonia hacked off the head of one corpses with her sword and then plunged a dagger into the skull of another while kicking a red corpse back into the boiling hot swamp. With quick thinking, she took a rebound gem out of her pack and then threw the gem at a tree with tremendous strength and the gem rebounded off of the bark, bouncing off and hitting other corpses.

"Come on, let's get to the other side before more arrive," said Simon as he started to run and he threw a cross out at the corpses that were going for him, the gold metal symbol burning through the corpses as they were purified into nothing but dust.

"You sure said it," exclaimed Sonia as she jumped over the wet, decaying hands that reached up for her leg. She immediately brought her spear down to break the hand, but another one reached up and touched her butt in a grab for her legs and was stomped to nothing but a disgusting pile of mush. "Even in death all men just want the same thing."

"And you'll find out just exactly what they want if you don't hurry along," said Simon over his shoulder as he jumped from dry marsh land to dry marsh land, avoiding whatever hand popped up and then he finally made it to the other side.

Turning, he saw that Sonia was still swatting her way through the marsh, her spear flying from hand to hand as it seemed like every lonely man who ever died on earth was trying to grab her and they were all getting places best left untouched by strangers. With a flick of his wrist, Simon let his whip out to lash at every hand that shot up to grab Sonia, never letting the leather whip rest as he sent Vampire Killer to the next target. By the time the hands had stopped popping, Simon was well on his way to dying from exhaustion while Sonia seemed to have taken her time and was well rested, a fact that may have made Simon a little pissed. For the first time since Simon had been a boy of twelve, he had to sit down and rest for a bit while someone else was rearing to go on ahead. She never said it because she knew why he was tired and that the fault partly rested on her, but he could tell just by the way she absent mindedly tapped her shoes on the ground. Before Simon could tell her to stop being too damn impatient, a sound of something wet and squishy mixed with the sound of feet on the earth that caused the two to turn. Standing there was a body that looked like it had worn out ten other bodies before it had been lost to the murky swamp and it looked like it used to be the body of a body builder because it's muscles hadn't decayed, nor had its strength as the powerful feet went down with tremendous thuds.