This feels familiar, Grant thought, pushing himself up from his crouching position on the floor as soon as he was certain the air above was blade-free. He supposed he should be thankful for all that dodging practice the axe armors had given him. He sprinted for one of the room's large columns before another scythe could head his way, and climbed easily up its side, his new vantage point giving him a clear view of his target and its tactics.
Miniature scythes, limned in a glow of hellish red, whirled through the air in endless spirals as Death hovered in their midst. As his teammates evaded the scythes below, Grant whipped his head around to track the weapons' flight. He counted four: one for each hunter. He had to hand it to Death; it really went out of its way to provide the personal touch.
Another conjured scythe spun at the column in a blur of red and black. Grant stabbed in its direction with a fistful of knives. Carrying more daggers than the rest of his team put together had its benefits: the dark weapon vanished in a blazing bloom of flames at its first contact with the silver.
A new scythe appeared at the border of his field of vision just as the flames died down. So Death's magical armaments, fragile though they were, functioned like the Hydra's heads: another was sure to spring up as soon as the first was destroyed. Focusing on eliminating the illusory scythes would only free him up to become the target of the one controlling them.
If Grant wanted this battle to end any time soon, he'd have to aim for Death itself.
From above, the darkness of Death's garments made its form appear to meld into the shadows of the room. But the metallic gleam of its scythe's curved blade shone out like a beacon through fog. Grant drew back the hand that clutched the daggers and aimed for the patch of shadows that he hoped contained Death's skull.
The daggers pelted down in a stabbing torrent. Grant knew they'd hit their mark as soon as the shadows shifted and the shocking white of Death's skeletal face tilted up to view him through empty eyes. The shrouded figure pointed its scythe in Grant's direction and began to ascend still higher.
It was stopped in midair by the burning strike of a whip. Trevor continued to lash out with the Vampire Killer from where he stood atop a small ledge, turning Death's attention away from Grant.
Death used the shaft of its weapon to block Trevor's next few hits. At the same time, it continued to glide closer to Trevor, moving in for the kill.
Grant turned the handle of his next dagger between his fingers, unsure of what to do. If his aim were just slightly off, Trevor might take the hit instead—and leave himself open for another one that couldn't be fixed with just a bandage.
An orb of lightning solved that problem for him, stunning Death in place and freeing Trevor to leap down from the ledge. The electricity that now illuminated the room provided Grant a clear view of two more balls of lightning materializing from nowhere before Sypha's outstretched arms.
Grant tossed more knives at Death from the column overhead. Alucard sent a wall of hellfire from behind. As Death raised its scythe and prepared to swing at the hunters on the ground, Sypha's lightning connected again, sending a rush of sparks traveling up the metal of the weapon toward its wielder's skeletal frame.
The force of their combined assault caused Death to pause and actually lower its scythe, skull drooping forward as it groaned in seeming exhaustion. Trevor tossed an axe at it from below—no sense in letting such an opportunity go to waste—and Grant nearly expected their opponent to crumble in a shower of bones.
But Death only straightened up again and extended one bony forearm to the side, before blinking from existence as though it had never been.
Grant stared in confusion for a moment. After such a dramatic entrance, this was a bit of an anticlimax.
But he wasn't complaining. Provided they wouldn't see the bastard's ugly skull again, a retreat was nearly as good as a kill. With a smile on his face, Grant slid effortlessly down the side of the column to join his comrades below.
The room went black as soon as his feet touched the floor.
Well, damn, Grant thought. This can't be good.
He groaned as Death's voice echoed around them again.
You thought this was over? Fools… I alone am the end of all things. Now, look me in the eye, and face your destiny…
Grant stared into the blackness that enfolded the room, straining to make out even a trace of Death's presence before it had the chance to attack. The possibility of a monster hunter being caught off guard by a being that announced all its appearances seemed almost humiliating. All he could see were the vague forms of his teammates before him, outlines shifting like liquid patches of ink as they too scanned the darkness.
Then Grant froze, his gaze fixed. It was as though something were scratching at his mind for his attention. Though there was no clatter of rattling bones, no invectives from a ghostly voice, his focus was drawn to the center of the room once more. Something was materializing from the depths of the shadows like a corpse bobbing to the surface of water.
Of course it was that bastard's ugly skull again.
It hovered there in the darkness, no longer attached to a body and ten times larger than before, and grinned at them through the voids of empty eye sockets and a gaping jaw. Death's skull now appeared browned and weathered with age, as though it had existed from time immemorial and only now been unearthed by some unfortunate discoverers. If it weren't for the fangs that extended into the abyss of its open mouth and how very alive it somehow seemed, it could have appeared nearly as human as any one of the skulls in Dracula's substantial collection.
Grant wanted to roll his eyes or throw out some bad joke; anything to let this persistent demon, who was apparently just dying for more daggers in its giant face, know that he and his team weren't scared of its little tricks. He really wanted to. But something about Death's current shape suddenly seemed far too real.
Was this skull that smiled down on them now Death's true form? Or their own futures reflected?
The grinning skull was moving through the air before Grant had time to aim another dagger, never taking its hollow eyes off the hunters as it spun along the same endless loops of its scythes.
It homed in on Trevor first.
Grant realized he could now see Trevor through the darkness, outlined against the illumination of a glowing blue light as he leapt into the air with the Vampire Killer in hand. At first, he dimly believed the source of the glow to be one of Sypha's electricity spells, or at least the flames of the Belnades staff. Then, as Trevor's whip made contact in a blazing strike, it finally registered that the light was shining out through the cavities of the aged skull of Death itself.
As it flickered and flared, white-blue like the hottest flames, the light in those empty eyes seemed almost to impart Death's grim countenance with an uncanny spark of life. There was something almost beautiful in how it shone within the skull, something so pure and beguiling in a vessel so repulsive and foul. Even from the angle where Grant stood now, his view within cut off by maxilla and zygomatic bone, something in those blue flames seemed to call him to face Death head-on and stare.
Trevor must have been feeling the same. Though he'd managed to strike Death when he'd jumped, and avoid its rotations through the enclosing void besides, something appeared to have changed in his demeanor from nearly the moment he'd landed. He seemed to have to force himself to even raise the whip again as he stared into the glow of Death's eye sockets, his own eyes reflecting that lovely eldritch blue.
Before Grant was certain what was happening, the blue fire in Death's eyes had died down to nothing. Its hanging jaw seemed to gape still wider. Another small scythe, edged with a crimson glow, materialized within the shadowy recesses of the skull.
It shot directly for Trevor's neck.
Trevor sidestepped at nearly the last moment, the scythe harmlessly slicing a strip of fabric from the shoulder of his tunic. Before the scythe could swerve back to him again, he turned, almost too roughly, and caught it in midair with a lash from his whip. The red-lit weapon vanished in a cloud of smoke, plunging the room into darkness again. The hunters could see nothing yet again—nothing but Death's morbidly pleased skull.
Though Trevor was safe and as in control as ever, Grant couldn't push down the rising suspicion that something was off. The Belmont hunter's movements and reaction time had seemed much less certain even after those hypnotic blue flames had vanished into nothingness. And with Trevor as the de facto leader of their team, strong and fearless even as the world was almost literally falling down around them, anything that managed to throw him off was sure to be that much more of a challenge for the rest of them.
Grant took hold of another dagger, uncertain if he should risk attacking. Death's focus was currently turned away from the other hunters, leaving their opponent's defenses all too open. But it would also be all too easy, within the dark and narrow confines of this room, for a thrown dagger to find one of his teammates first.
Then a shadow that must have been Trevor's stood out in relief against the angles and planes of Death's skull as the hunter jumped to lash out at it again. A rush of flame traveled down the chain links of the Vampire Killer as the morning star at its end launched toward its target.
That was when everything went wrong.
The whip fell short.
The morning star hit the floor with a heavy clunk.
Death glided for Trevor with blazing eyes.
The blue fires inside the skull gave the other hunters a split-second view of Death's grotesque visage colliding with their teammate. Then Trevor vanished from their sight as the twin flames died down and thick darkness choked the battlefield again.
The solid thud of something impossibly heavy and fast striking a human body resounded from all corners of the room. Then there was the crack of something hitting a wall hard, and the clattering of skulls as it collapsed to the floor. From somewhere underneath it all, Grant could just make out Trevor's pained, too-quiet groan.
The haunting silence that descended was sliced through by Sypha's strangled cry. "Trevor!"
It didn't matter that Grant couldn't see the results of Death's attack for himself. The images his mind conjured in the dark were already more than enough.
He tossed a dagger at Death's goddamn happy face and rushed to grab another handful more.
The room lit up electric blue.
Grant squinted his eyes against the glare, nearly dropping the knives in his hand as the charged air tingled along his skin.
Sypha had summoned an arsenal of lightning orbs, larger than any Grant had seen yet, that flickered and twitched with an audible crackling buzz. With a visceral shout of rage, the magician shot them at Death in a barrage.
The spheres of concentrated electricity bombarded Death's skull like zapping cannonballs, knocking it off its invisible path and bringing it to another stop in midair. A new cyan spark blossomed before Sypha's outspread arms as the magician stared Death down, face set in a controlled fury.
But it didn't stay that way for long.
All at once, the summoned lightning seemed to shrivel away, contracting in spasms and twists before Sypha's disbelieving eyes, until it was as small and harmless as the glow of a firefly. Then it faded away entirely and the world went black again.
At first, Grant was sure this was just another one of Death's dirty tricks. Then the truth hit him as he recalled Trevor's words:
"... none of our resources, magical or otherwise, are unlimited. "
Ever since they'd broken down the door to Dracula's entrance hall, Sypha's magic had been practically carrying the rest of the team—literally, when it came to that levitation spell in the pit. And Grant had heard Sypha mention that lightning, the most powerful element at the monk's disposal, was also the most taxing to summon.
Sypha's magic reserves were completely drained. And somehow, Grant doubted that the monastery had provided much training in hand-to-skull combat.
Death darted through the air for Sypha, its path as smooth and rapid as the swing of a scythe.
Sypha lifted the Belnades staff overhead, its mystic fires ablaze. Then, panting in anger and exertion, the magician brought down all of the weapon's heavy metallic length to bludgeon Death's skull, over and over, so hard that Grant expected it to leave cracks.
The fire inside the skull burned to life again, shining out through Death's eye sockets and flooding the arena in a strangely captivating blue. The glow seemed almost to overpower the aura of flames that leapt along Sypha's weapon—for just a moment.
Then Sypha's grip went slack, and the staff's flames died out as it clattered to the floor.
Grant's jaw dropped. Sypha seemed as unsettlingly transfixed by the white-blue radiance of Death's unearthly flames as Trevor had been. Death must have, all along, been working some darker magic beyond simply the power to enthrall—Grant could see it in his teammate's very face.
Sypha's eyes were rapidly scanning the bottomless depths of liquid light that pooled in the craters of Death's skull, searching desperately for something that Grant couldn't see. The magician's lip seemed to quiver, out of fear or helpless rage.
The hands that had thrashed Death with the staff only seconds before now reached out, trembling, as though to touch something within those chasms of endless burning blue.
They never got the chance.
The fire in Death's eyes shrunk down to blue embers as a scythe whirled from its fanged mouth. Sypha barely dodged in time, ducking down so that the blade just grazed the thick fabric of the robes' cowl.
As the room went dark, Death followed in the scythe's wake before Sypha could stand upright again. The sound of a body crashing hard to the floor echoed through the engulfing blackness. Then everything went still.
In the darkness and the silence, it was almost as if Sypha and Trevor had never been there—like they'd never existed at all.
Two hunters down. Two to go.
The time for caution had long since passed. Grant had to take action, decisive and vicious and now, before that smug skeleton bastard got the chance to add a few more notches to its scythe.
At least his fallen teammates were now well out of range of his knives, lying still and silent as statues on that skull-covered floor. He could only hope they were doing so by choice. And if Alucard, wherever the hell he was, had any common sense alongside those freaky vampire senses, then hopefully he'd be able to dodge any blades that got too close.
Grant flung some more daggers at the looming skull, grateful it was such an easy target, and tossed another over his shoulder just in time to meet the miniature scythe behind him on its rebound. In a matter of moments, all that remained of Death's weapon was a crimson glare at the corner of Grant's vision and the fading echoes of a dying flame.
More flames burst to life and launched toward Death from the opposite side of the room, leaving behind scorching trails that lingered for an instant upon the air. Alucard's silhouette, with cloak thrown back and posture stiff and controlled as always, stood out against the ephemeral red glow for a fleeting glimpse before the room melted into darkness again.
It was beginning to feel as though the room Grant's team had entered had vanished entirely, with nothing remaining but Death and the boundless shadows that now formed its shroud. Its gnarled skull leered down at them through the inky gloom like a blood moon on a starless night.
As Sypha and Trevor had just proven, attacking Death head-on was like performing a balancing act on a razor's edge. Look into its eyes, and chance drowning in those spectral pools of bottomless blue—look away, and chance sinking into darkness instead.
But surely this battle was nearly at its end. With two skilled hunters hitting Death with everything they could throw, how much more could even the most hardheaded demon take?
Grant always was good at balancing acts.
His thrown daggers, catching the light of Alucard's next round of hellfire, were mere glints of silver against the crushing darkness. Both hunters' best weapons shot through the air, like rogue comets seeking to knock Death's grimly whirling skull off its orbit.
Death spun out of reach of Alucard's attack just before it could connect, leaving the fireballs to smolder out to nothing in the darkness beyond. But Grant heard the faint blunt cracks of knives striking bone, and his lips twitched along the ghost of a grin.
Direct hit.
But it was much too early to celebrate. There was little doubt in Grant's mind that he'd soon be face-to-face with Death, like Trevor and Sypha before. The only reason those hits had been able to land so easily was because their opponent was now focusing all of its attention on him.
As Death glided toward him, Grant clutched more daggers in his hand and stepped backward through the remains of fallen hunters that littered the floor. He kept his eyes locked all the while on the rictus at the lower half of Death's eternally amused skull. Focusing on only half of his enemy was limiting himself to a narrower target, true, but it was also limiting Death's chances of being able to snare him the same way it'd trapped his teammates.
Whatever he did, he could not look into its eyes.
That wasn't so unusual a task—not for a monster hunter, anyway. There were plenty of demons out there that personified the concept of looks that kill: basilisks, gorgons, cockatrices… and those were just the ones he'd heard of. This wasn't unusual, he told himself, as he shifted aside more hunters' skulls and moved deeper into the darkness. It wasn't unusual at all.
But did any scale-coated bird, or woman with serpentine hair, gaze out on their victims with such dazzling fire in the hollows of their eyes? Did any reptilian slayer of man have a stare of such a lustrous blue?
Grant could just see those advancing flames dance along the upper reaches of his vision in a parade of sparkling blue, could nearly feel them lick across his face in a strange burning chill—so fatally beautiful to the sight, and now so close to the touch. He raised the daggers and drew back his arm, faintly wishing that the part of his mind that was still a monster hunter, all deadly stratagems and cold rationality, could stab out at the part that could soon become a monster's spellbound prey instead.
But it was not the entrancing vision of sky-colored embers that loosened his grip on the daggers, that sent his honed blades scattering as lightly across the floor as trinkets abandoned after a market fair. It was not the disturbing caresses of tongues of fire against his face, or even the slipping sensation of his hold on his mind melting away before their light.
It was the piercing sound of his comrades' screams.
Not the ones who'd faced Death alongside him, now quiet and motionless in the depths of the darkness, but his comrades from the time before: from the time when he hadn't been a monster, but only a man. From when a band of would-be Wallachian heroes ventured up a clock tower in search of victory, and never did get to venture back down.
From the time when they'd faced a different kind of death—one that no human alive had any chance to defeat.
And though Grant knew, objectively, that he must still be in some gory alcove of Castle Dracula's sprawling foyer, wading through the last remnants of hunters less lucky than he and fighting for his life, it no longer felt like truth in any way that mattered.
Not when his old comrades were right before his eyes.
He'd recognize them anywhere—though now they barely seemed recognizable at all. They lay strewn across the shadows at the top of the clock tower, crumpled and torn, as dim slashes of moonlight through the windows illuminated what was better left to the darkness. The silver light traced along the crimson softness of flesh and ivory angles of bone, all cut from a backdrop of skin burnt leathery black.
And Grant could do nothing to mend what had already been broken beyond repair, any more than he could halt the endless rotations of the tower's mighty gears, or turn back the hands of time itself. He could do nothing now but gaze upon his lifeless comrades in horror—just like he'd done before.
But in this eternal moment, the concepts of "now" and "before" seemed hardly to matter. It was as though his world had narrowed to the dimensions of this lonely room at the tower's top, painted messily with the blood of Wallachia's last hopes, and himself its sole resident: the only rebel left alive. He was in that tower once more, if he was anywhere at all.
He remembered everything. The way the metallic throb of the tower's innards seemed to echo through his whole body, drowning out his heartbeat and replacing it with the castle's own. The way the lord of the castle had seen personally to meet them, materializing from a vortex of shadows and sending jets of hellfire to shoot up from the floor. The way only he had been swift—or lucky, or selfish —enough to clamber up a pillar and dodge, leaving his brothers in arms to the mercy of Dracula's unholy flames.
He remembered, and he remembered why he had forgotten.
Was it any wonder his mind had so easily melded into that of the demonic body he'd been forced into, that primal simplicity with no beginning and no end? From the heights of the castle, everything else had seemed so small. It was so much easier to live as one of many anonymous warriors of Dracula, from one endless night to the next, or to kill that same nameless army with an indifferent blade, than it was to face the reality that some part of him had buried, that dark and stalking beast that never could be slain.
He'd assumed, when he'd allowed himself to think of it at all, that Dracula's transmogrification spell had been only a novelty on the part of its caster: reducing a former opponent to little more than a toy soldier, the only living trophy in his collection. But maybe that monstrous form had been more apt than he'd let himself believe.
How could he expect to fight for Wallachia when he couldn't even fight for his friends? He couldn't avenge them back then—too frozen by cold realization to descend from the pillar, to even remember how to raise a dagger and aim. He couldn't defend his new ones even now, as he stared, motionless, at blazing eyes that held unchangeable death from unreachable days, knowing all the while that he was inviting more death his way as a massive skull hurtled at him through the dark.
Maybe he really was a monster.
Maybe he'd been one all along.
Grant stared, as still as a corpse, as the blue flames of memory faded to claustrophobic black and a scythe with his soul on it shot his way.
Then, for the second time that night, a gloved hand gripped his arm and pulled him to unwanted safety.
From somewhere out of reach, past the heaving of his breath and the pounding of his blood, came the sound of a scythe exploding into flames.
Grant tilted his head back and gazed upward, already knowing who he'd see. Alucard's golden eyes glinted at him through the blackness, lit by the cluster of newly conjured fireballs that hovered before him and unreadable as Grant had ever known.
"Don't die on me yet, Danasty," Alucard murmured. "We've got to end this now."
For one flickering instant, Grant almost believed he saw a shadow of concern cross that fixed and distant stare. Then Alucard threw back his cloak and shot the waiting fireballs in Death's direction, shielding himself in darkness and mystery anew.
"I'll distract it," Alucard went on in a low whisper, as the hellfire battered Death's skull and brought it to a momentary stop. "Now go—finish it off." By the light of the fading flames, Grant just caught Alucard gesturing away from himself in a motion that was urgent and dismissive at once, his eyes seemingly focused on the empty cavities of Death's own.
As Grant stalked away, he felt some twisted side of himself long to feel furious at this turn of events, to smolder with indignant rage and stoke the blue fires still blazing in his mind. Not just at Alucard's patronizing him—though that would have been irritating at even the best of times—but that fate had seen fit to spare him yet again. Was there any more obvious way to express a desire for oblivion than literally getting lost in the eyes of the avatar of death itself?
It must have been only a matter of seconds that he'd stood before Death, transfixed, despite feeling as though he'd retraced every step up that damned tower that loomed over all his memories. And yet, in those brief moments that he'd lost himself again, Trevor and Sypha, if they still lived—and even Alucard—could easily have met the same end as all of his comrades before.
Someone like him didn't deserve a second chance—no, a third.
Not when his old friends never even got one.
That warped half of his mind, his shadow self cast by Death's flames, still wanted desperately to be a martyr, and throw himself upon a pyre of regret. But now, free from ethereal deception and squinting into commonplace darkness once more, Grant couldn't help but realize how much clearer everything suddenly seemed.
Especially when pale blue light burned at the corner of his vision, and he turned just far enough to glimpse Alucard in silhouette, upright and deathly still, meeting Death's fiery glare head-on.
Even before Grant was made to face those same eyes and return to the horror in the clock tower, it had been as though he was traversing the castle in a haze of questions with no answers.
Did he have the time, then, when that vampire bastard started shooting flames, to attack at all? Did he even have the skill? Could he have avenged his team, if only he'd had the guts to act? Could he have saved any life besides his own damn self?
He hadn't known then. He didn't know now.
But there was one answer he already had—the answer that had led him to this very battle.
No matter what he'd done for his comrades and friends—no matter what he hadn't —he was not the one responsible for their deaths.
It was Dracula who'd killed them—Dracula who'd ravaged their country and home, with all his accursed minions of the night, and driven the defenders of Wallachia to storm his castle on that night so long ago.
Not him.
By the blue fires in Death's empty eyes, drawing nearer still, Grant could see Alucard clearly now too. He seemed to stare intently—almost wistfully—into the flames, as he waited, quiescent, for Grant to take action.
Alucard trusted him—no matter how little they knew each other, no matter how Grant had failed in the past. So why shouldn't he trust himself?
If he wanted an answer to that question, he'd need to attack now.
Grant clutched as many daggers as he could hold, and tossed them at Death with all the force of a stake being driven into a heart. There was no time to rejoice in the scraping of metal against bone, or how Death's stop enabled Alucard, mere inches from its skull, to stealthily slip away. Not when there was still time to gather up another fistful of knives.
He was drawing back his arm and launching the daggers at his target before he could even register that they were the last in his possession, the rest of his most reliable of weapons scattered amongst the skulls in the darkness and protruding from the visage of Death itself. It was only as his hand circled his weapon belt and came up empty that he realized the truth. But in the tumult of battle, with more lives than his own resting upon his shoulders, Grant knew better than to let himself worry.
Daggers or no daggers, he'd end that skinless goddamn bastard anyway.
Grant reached into the scabbard he hadn't touched since the clock tower, his fingers closing around the hilt of a blade. Then he charged at Death, fire in his own eyes and broken scimitar in hand.
Like the rest of his team, Grant much preferred to pick off his enemies from a distance whenever he had the choice. But like any monster hunter, he knew the choice wasn't always his.
His sword, if he could still call it that, had been assigned to him by his raiding party: when he was still a human, and it was still a weapon. It had been hastily salvaged from one of the now-nameless villages Dracula's army had razed to the ground, which should've been a warning sign—the cheap thing's blade got snapped in two within the tower's maze of clockwork gears, in a fight with the same skeleton soldier that got him in the leg.
He'd had vain hopes of looting a replacement within the castle, or even being lucky enough to have the thing somehow repaired—before Dracula appeared, and clipped the wings of his and his comrades' lofty ambitions before they could even begin to take flight. And so the sword with the too-short blade had remained in the scabbard a monster like himself would never use, just where he'd left it on that last night a lifetime ago.
It wasn't the worst thing he'd held on to, he supposed.
Grant no longer cared that the scimitar was so short he'd have to get within touching distance of Death to get even one strike in, or that the snapped blade might not even survive one strike against solid bone layered inches thick. One way or another, he just wanted it all to end.
What more could Death possibly do? Ensnare him with a single glance, as fiery visions of past horrors danced once again in its eyes? That wouldn't work a second time. Not when he'd already witnessed those same horrors twice over. Knock him into the enfolding darkness, where Trevor and Sypha still waited in silent shadows? Kill him? If his friends had suffered through that, then so would he.
But it wouldn't come to that, he told himself, as he gripped his broken sword and lunged for his opponent. He'd stab out at Death until the blade broke down to the hilt—then he'd turn the hilt around and bash it with the pommel instead. He wouldn't stop until the bastard's skull had crumbled to dust. And then... it had damn well better be dead by then.
Grant plunged the sword into his opponent's skeletal façade with a thrilling ferocity he'd never felt before. He stabbed at Death the way he wished he could have stabbed at Dracula back then—the way he couldn't stab away his memories now. In this electric moment, he and his weapon regarded their foe as though the battered, looming skull before them, darkened by time and studded with knives, contained all the evil in the world.
This was personal, after all—it had always been.
The broken blade sank into Death with a faint but reassuring crack. Grant could almost have sworn he caught a blue-lit glimpse of skull fragments exploding from the point where metal met bone before crumbling away into the shadows. With less than an arm's length now separating himself from his foe, however, he really doubted he'd get the chance to view that sight a second time.
Then, just before Grant could decide whether to dodge out of Death's path or brace for impact, both his spirits and the room were lightened by a different sight: the searing orange glow of another wave of hellfire, striking the other side of the skull and stunning it again. Alucard continued to barrage Death with fireballs as Grant gritted his teeth and reached for his sword.
In a single motion, he seized the hilt of the scimitar and wrenched it free. This time he was certain of it: jagged chunks of bone, larger than before, fell away from Death's skull in the wake of the blade and vanished in the sea of darkness.
Before the fragments had even reached the floor, Grant was stabbing out at Death again. He stabbed too furiously to even bother keeping count of just how many hits he'd landed, or just how many cracks were left behind when he did. Again and again he drove the blade deep into the skull, and pulled it roughly from the surface of rapidly splintering bone.
Soon, Grant began to feel as though his body was stabbing away by pure instinct, while his mind drifted away to somewhere outside of time. It was the darkness of memory behind his eyes that called to mind his last comrades and his old life, all he'd known and lost, and the radiance of hellfire before them that reminded him of his new team and the future for which they fought—the sunrise at the end of an interminable night.
So intent was he, body and mind, on bringing this nightmare to an end, he scarcely noticed the extent of the damage he'd inflicted until his blade pierced nothing but air.
Grant's eyes widened as his hand, still clenching the hilt of the scimitar, seemed to sail past its target and through Death's skull, as though his opponent were no more tangible than mist. He paused mid-strike for a tense second, arm still extended before him, certain he'd fallen into yet another trap. After nothing appeared to change, however, his eyes then followed the path of his last weapon's broken blade, as it shone like a silver bridge to the destination he thought he'd never reach.
What remained of Death's haunting, shattered countenance was now steadily fading into the shadows of the room. As it continued to crumble away, spectral skull fragments dissolving from view before they could join the others on the floor, the dimming light where hollow eyes had been seemed no longer to call to mind any human Grant had known—whether living or dead.
Grant at first refused to lower his scimitar from its place against the air, still unconvinced this wasn't a ruse. But as he raised his eyes to face Alucard's, now visible on the other side of what once was Death's skull, something in that golden gaze convinced him to stay his hand.
The vampire's stare, at once level with his and fixed on somewhere far away, seemed hardly to regard Death at all. There was no sword drawn from a scabbard, no hellfire conjured before an outstretched hand. Alucard's entire being, glimpsed through swiftly thickening shadows, was still, nearly immobile, as though he were holding his breath—or waiting for the end.
It was Alucard who'd been there to pull Grant to safety, then and now: from the wall of Dracula's pit trap, and from the depths of his own despair. If Alucard, his comrade, believed it was safe, then Grant knew he was in no danger.
If there was one more thing he could be certain of, in this castle filled to its spires with illusions and treachery, it was that.
The two hunters watched in silence as the last remnants of Death's crumbling skull faded from the physical realm entirely, with nothing left behind to mark its presence but a dying message from a ghostly voice.
Don't think you've won yet, Death's disembodied words echoed once more. I always win in the end…
Then the words faded away too.
The endless darkness that had cloaked their arena suddenly lifted, and the room's narrow, skull-strewn expanse was again faintly illuminated by the flickering glow of distant candlelight. The door to outside swung open as if by magic, its ornate frame now containing a vista of towering black trees against an indigo sky. A clatter sounded from a far corner as Trevor and Sypha, dazed but unbroken, shifted among the skulls on the floor.
Their battle, at long last, was over.
Grant knew he should have been relieved. He should have rushed over and made sure his comrades were all right, or made a cheap joke that'd make Trevor laugh and Sypha groan and Alucard ignore him completely (it would be so very easy to say that Death "might as well have quit when it was a head"), or just jumped up and cheered.
But he could only stand in place with heart and mind racing, vaguely disoriented, as the world spun on without him.
The contents of this little room should have provided every reason for celebration, he knew.
There was Trevor, bracing himself against a wall and clambering to his feet, and Sypha, sitting upright and scanning the floor for the Belnades staff. There was Alucard, staring into some invisible distance even still, with an expression familiar and unknowable in one. There was a cool breeze flowing in from outside, with the fresh scent of evergreens carried upon the air.
Grant's friends and fellow hunters were safe at last, and respite waited just past the open door. And he should have rejoiced, for no longer did the grisly skeletons of his exhumed past live again inside Death's skull.
But he couldn't rejoice, now—for they were inside his own instead.
Author's Note: So, this chapter is definitely up a lot later than I expected—by now I've spent more time working on it than it took me to beat the actual CV3. I didn't realize just how much I was attempting to cover at once until I actually began writing.
Hope you're enjoying the story so far, and thanks so much for your patience if you've been following it for a while!
Final chapter (and some awkward conversations) coming up next! See you there!