Chapter XIII

The Imprisoned Monsters

"We're back!" Maria announced as she stepped into the sanctuary.

She glanced at Alucard who noticed her gesture and still did nothing. She nudged him in the ribs.

"We took the liberty of restocking our potions," he said calmly, much to Maria's displeasure, "We used most of the rest to heal the two of you."

"That giant goat-headed freak show sure did a number on you guys," Maria said cheerfully. She cast a glare at Alucard who nearly recoiled before responding miserably to her comment.

"…Twenty seven…"

"Yay!" Maria cheered and hopped into the air.

"Uh, what are we all missing here?" Jonathan asked the dhampir. Alucard's shoulders sagged upon hearing the question.

"She intends to make me more sociable. I understand why she might feel it a noble cause, but it is a doomed effort. Her current techniques are especially terrible, as well as painful."

"And those methods are…?" Charlotte prompted.

"She thinks that I might follow up on some of her silly remarks. She is mistaken and it is ebbing away at my sanity. Please tell her to stop."

Maria's eyes flared.

"Would it kill you to be more cheerful?" she shouted.

"I suppose not, but I have no reason to feel so, and it would not fit my personality as it is. It would not kill me, but it would severely injure what little self-respect I have for myself."

Maria seemed to wilt at the analysis.

"But, why don't you think it's okay to be happy?"

"My blood is cursed. You know that. I am a monster. When this escapade is complete, I will return to my coffin and resume my eternal slumber. If I can dream, then I may be happy, because that way there will be no chance of me hurting anyone."

Maria walked away silently and sat down on one of the beds.

"Except me," she whispered.

"What was that?" Jonathan asked her.

"Oh, uh, nothing. Don't worry about it."

"Whatever you say. Alucard says to stop, by the way."

"I heard him!" she shouted haughtily.

"Ow! That hurts like the Devil!" Stella howled as she staggered through the doorway. Her already tattered dress was barely even hanging off of her shoulders anymore. Jonathan was sure it would just slip off entirely at any moment. He also noticed that she was bleeding and there were seven arrows protruding from her back. But that dress…

"Eyes off of her chest you pervert," Charlotte reprimanded him, dragging him of by the ear, "What happened to you on your way back Stella? You're a total wreck!"

"I got beaten by a skeleton flail and got trapped in a room with a horde of skeleton archers. Then an axe armor, well, axed me in the side of the head. And I know that seems unlike me but these rooms were all swarming with medusa heads. I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate medusa heads! I wanna kill them and murder their families!"

"Calm down Stella," Loretta cooed soothingly, "I'll help close the wounds and when we get out of here we'll buy a new dress that's identical to the one you're wearing."

"Yeah…" Stella sighed in blissful deliriousness. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed like a house of cards.

"Eek! Sister!" Loretta cried out worriedly, immediately grabbing a potion and force-feeding it to her sister.

Three restful hours later, Charlotte was still, understandably, feeling rather awkward around Jonathan, having said what she had earlier and with him responding so…insensitively? No, not insensitively, more as though he were mildly frightened or worried. Was he actually creeped out by her? Maybe he just respected her too much to say so?

Before she had time to mull this over, Stella, now wearing a beige leather fencer's outfit, approached her. Charlotte vaguely noticed that the right side of her head was bandaged, blocking her eye and forcing her hair to be let down. Charlotte had never realized how long Stella's hair actually was. It fell almost all the way down to her waist, short only by a few inches.

"We're just about ready to continue on ahead. Are you ready?"

Charlotte stared blankly back for a few moments before blinking and refocusing her attention.

"Uh, sorry, what was that, I was a bit spaced out when you said…that."

Stella huffed impatiently, "I said that we're about to leave and I asked if you were ready to go."

"Oh, uh, yeah. I'm ready."

"Then let's get going," Stella turned on her heel and went over and left the sanctuary, convening with the rest of the group in the antechamber and leaving Charlotte by herself. She got up from the bed and looked at herself in the washroom's mirror.

"What's wrong with me?" She mumbled. She knew that something was off about herself. Why would she just blurt something out like that? Did she even really like Jonathan that much? No way! He was a total dunce: She'd known that about him for years. Her perfect guy was an academic like her. But then again, if her perfect guy really was an academic, how would he take the fact that she was a witch? Wouldn't he try to prove all of her magic was either fake of provable by science? God forbid anyone would do that. She'd be harassed for years on end. But then did that also mean that Jonathan was her only option? Or maybe Oliver? One was an idiot and the other was a coward…although in Oliver's defense, his potion prices were fabulous. And Jonathan was always fun to be around and was an endless source of entertainment.

"You said you were ready?" Stella said irritably, interrupting her thoughts.

"Oh, yeah…coming."

Charlotte made a point however of returning to these thoughts at the next available opportunity.

After a quick examination of the room occupied by the late Adramelech, they found a heavy iron door embedded in the masonry. It was locked.

"Alucard? Would you do the honors?" Maria asked. All she got was a shrug. He took the key out of his coat pocket and placed it into the keyhole under the handle. He turned it and with a heavy clanking the tumbler opened and the metal door slid open noisily.

The room beyond was strange to say the least. It was full of thick metal tubes and walls, and the lighting was sparse and inelegant, giving the hall the appearance of a prison.

"So what is this place exactly?" Loretta asked uncomfortably.

"I'm not really sure," Charlotte mused, "I mean it looks like prison in certain ways, but if it is, where are the cells?"

"There's a lever over here," Jonathan gestured to a thin metal rod built into the left wall, "Do you think it's a trap or should I move it?"

"There's one on the opposite wall too, so I don't think it's a trap," Charlotte guessed, "Let's move them at the same time just in case. They might spring a trap if activated at different times."

"Alright then, let's do it," Jonathan nodded.

They both went over to the levers and with a heave, pushed them from a downward position into an upward position. The result was obvious and immediate: With the grinding of a multitude of gears, the iron walls and tubes rose into the ceiling. What was beyond them was disturbing to say the least.

"It really is a prison," gasped Maria.

"A prison? More like a monster zoo," Stella observed, "Although I guess that the room does have a prison-ish vibe to it."

They walked down the hall passing a variety of different monsters. In several rooms there were what appeared to be what would have otherwise been white dragons, but these things actually had bodies. And skin.

"They're actually… alive!" Jonathan said in astonishment.

The tubes mostly contained what may once have been humans, but virtually all of them were hideously mutated. Some were clearly victims of Camilla's Chupacabra, judging by the fact that some of them looked to be something between human and cave troll. They continued along the dimly lit corridors. Playful warg pups in one cell, fiery salamanders in another. Camilla seemed to be doing some very twisted experiments on her monsters: In one holding cell, they found a pack of unmoving puppies–or at least what was left of what obviously puppies of a variety of different dogs. They had all been horrifically mutilated and they were clearly all undead. Maria couldn't look at it for even a second before she ran past it as fast she could. In a particularly bizarre case, hey found what might have been resurrected bone pillars. They were quite literally a bunch of stacked dinosaur heads grafted on top of each other, all of which were alive judging by the healthy-looking skin.

The further into the laboratory/prison they went, the larger the cells–and their occupants–became. They had gotten close to reaching the end of the hall. In a particularly large cell full of jungle-like foliage, they found an entire pack of what appeared to be dinosaurs, but they were almost bird-like. Their posture, they way they held their heads, the shape of their arms and legs. Everything screamed bird. But dinosaurs couldn't possibly be related to birds, could they? Wouldn't they be closer to something like alligators, or other large reptiles? Jonathan didn't know what velociraptors were, nor did anyone on the planet, but they were nothing like the lumbering creatures he imagined them to be. They were agile, light-footed and they looked positively deadly with their long claws, especially the hooked claw on their middle toe. But most frightening of all was when one of the creatures came up to the forcefield that imprisoned it and looked at him. In that reptile's eyes, Jonathan could see a terrifying intelligence. These things were smart, they were clearly team players judging by the way they grouped together as they play-fought one another, and they looked twice as vicious as wild dogs. God forbid they should escape into the outside world. The damage they could cause would be at least slightly significant.

Another cell that also had a jungle theme inside it didn't appear to have anything inside it. Then with a crash, a large grey dinosaur-like creature with no arms, a short tail, and muscular legs with blunt claws stomped through the foliage and charged at the forcefield. There was an electrical buzzing sound and the creature was tossed backwards, landing on its side with a heavy thud. It roared and reared back. It pulled its 'lips' back revealing the blunt teeth of a herbivore, and with a hiss, a globe of white energy began to grow inside its mouth. After a few seconds it lunged forward and the globe expanded, transforming into a thick beam of searing energy. Fortunately for the six hunters, even that didn't break the forcefield.

"That, I know what that is!" Charlotte exclaimed, "That's Gergoth! She's resurrected Gergoth! Remember that undead monster we found in the Nest of Evil?"

"Yeah, I remember. Eric told us to kill it with a regular book, remember? That was brutal."

"Our father what?" Stella asked skeptically.

"That's a story that can wait. First we've got to set this gentle creature free before she torments it into insanity."

"What! Charlotte, are you out of your mind! It'll kill us!"

"No. It won't. Gergoth is a benevolent creature. It serves all that is good. The only reason it attacked us in the Nest of Evil was because it was undead and driven to insanity from imprisonment."

The creature behind the forcefield lowered itself to the ground to have its face level with Charlotte's body. It seemed sad.

"Can you hear me?" she asked the beast gently.

It nodded, to everyone's astonishment.

"And you understand me too, don't you?"

Once again it nodded.

"I'm going to find a way to get you out of here," Charlotte said with fierce determination, "There has to be something in this hallway that can disable the barrier."

Gergoth nodded one last time, and slowly, it stomped off back into the foliage.

"Let's keep going," Charlotte decided, "There has to be something we can use to free him."

As they reached the end of the hallway, they found an utterly enormous cell. And within…

"Are those…?" Maria gasped in awe.

"Dragons? Yes," Charlotte confirmed.

Inside the cell were dragons of all shapes and sizes. There were coal black creatures like the one they had fought back in Ithaca, and great red beasts like the one that had appeared from the Book of Binding. There were huge green monsters that had serpentine bodies and wings. A hydra's heads seemed to bicker and snap at each other as wyverns flew high above it. Various other draconic creatures stalked the massive chamber beyond the forcefield. All of them were terrifying and magnificent. They noticed a strange panel on a wall far to their side. Walking up to it, Charlotte found a black scroll with white runes written on it. She understood what the spell was however.

"'Reverse…Sanctuary'? Does that mean that these monsters are trapped because of a twisted version of my own spell?"

"Could be… why don't you try your own out and see if it works?" Jonathan suggested.

"Alright."

They returned to the cell containing Gergoth and after a few minutes, Sanctuary's long incantation had been recited.

Light erupted all around them. Charlotte focused all her energy into directing its power into the forcefield holding Gergoth. It only took a few moments: The barrier separating it from the rest of the world shattered and it was free. It bellowed excitedly.

"Releasing that creature may have been another mistake on your part, Miss Aulin," hissed a vaguely familiar voice.

They turned to see Slogra leaning against the opposite wall. Gaibon crouched next to him on the ground, a bored look on his face.

"And why exactly would that be?" Charlotte retorted.

"And what do you mean by 'another?'" Jonathan asked confrontationally.

"Consider this," Slogra raised a skeletal clawed finger and pointed in the direction that they came–the opposite end of the hall–where they had carelessly left the door open, "This room is a private chamber belonging to that accursed Devil Forgemistress. You have entered without express permission—which she would never give any of you mind you, you have killed her guardian, and you have also touched her…err…'belongings.' And then there's the small matter that you haven't locked her out. She is on her way here at this very moment, and because you locked neither the front entrance nor the door to this room, her inner chambers, she'll be able to step out of the shadows at any moment. Frankly I'm surprised she hasn't interrupted our little chat yet. If I were you, I would not have come here if I weren't absolutely ready for a direct fight with her. I'm not quite sure that you are prepared."

"Didn't your boss want us to kill her though?" Jonathan asked bemusedly.

Gaibon suddenly raised his head in alarm. Slogra gave him a look.

"While the answer to that is yes, you haven't seen her fight yet. Now if you'll excuse us, we both must really be going."

There was a ripple in the air as the fabric of existence around Death's servants was distorted, and when it stopped, the two demons were gone.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Sella said in a hushed voice.

And well you should!

Camilla burst from of the shadows at the other end of the hall, her visage a portrait of all-consuming fury.

"What have you done!" she screeched.

Author's Note: Well, we've got a big showdown between your favorite extravagant ex-vampiress and Camilla coming up next. Stay tuned for the big showdown! But this is by no means the end of the story. Remember, they still have to defeat Orlok and Alastor. But until then…it's ¡SHOWTIME! Coming up next!