Chapter 10: Resolve

"To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible."

-Thomas Aquinas

Țepeș focused his sight inwardly as he sat in the gloomy laboratory. He'd been trying to discern Lisa's surroundings for the better part of the evening with mixed results.

She would, Țepeș reasoned with irritation, wander straight into a band of Speakers and their archaic protection spells that nevertheless remain surprisingly efficacious.

His bond with Lisa remained intact—still potent—a vivid, physical memory. But as he sought to envision and sense her, it was as if he were behind a heavy locked door. He perceived her essence through the thick spell, but was thwarted from summoning a clear vision and a precise location. At first the interference had mystified him. Then it enraged just as it offended him. Finally, it began to trouble him. It was possible to thwart such simple, elemental magic, but it would require him to make his presence known, something he was sure would go against Lisa's wishes and beyond his professed claim that he would merely use the bond to ensure she was safe. He was well aware she resented him enough as it was.

There was little to distract his mind in her absence. Even the unfolding battle against the Ottomans held little interest; when armies united under a common cause but not a common leader, there was little hope for victory. It was a tired scenario: petty rivalries took precedent and while foolish men squabbled over rank and authority, the ruthless Ottoman army would gain a greater foothold in the region.

Let them destroy each other, as they are so keen on doing. One empire over the other: it matters little. They are all of the same inferior ilk.

His thoughts touched on the conjurers whom he'd released much against his better judgment. Nothing those charlatans managed to conjure would award them anything close to the victory they sought. Only he could unleash forces powerful enough to devastate one of the world's greatest armies—the army that had conquered and mercilessly desecrated thousand-year old Constantinople herself. An old yearning reared its fierce head and he acknowledged that despite the passing of the years, the fire to wage war and assert his supremacy would not be easily quelled.

War had been, after all, what had sealed his fate. Before anything else had transpired, he'd been at the helm of battle as a warlord. He'd been no stranger to the unique maneuverings, schemes, and strategizing those with the power to command thousands of men tangled with.

Men's ambitions led him to become what he was and he became what men deserved. They and their boundless greed had brought this upon themselves. He would never yearn for a time when he was weaker, vulnerable: when he counted himself among their ranks.

He had explored every facet of human existence in search of a greater authority: from the pageantry and reverence of idolatry to primal depraved violence devoid of any semblance of humanity. He had annihilated life needlessly to explore the consequences of such a transgressive act. No matter what morally untethering acts he committed, he'd been allowed to forge ahead, undeterred, encouraged, and at times enraged by the divine silence his deeds had been met with, concluding that he acted in an indifferent universe, before an absent, impotent deity. In the depths of the destructiveness he had unleashed he sought to become a replacement and subversion of that god men had glorified.

Non habebis deos alienos coram me, he had blasphemed on battlegrounds, furious and omnipotent, drenched in the blood of the vanquished as he paraded before trembling men. For I: I am a jealous god.

As long as he had existed, he had understood something dark and unfavorable about humanity.

There is no purity, no goodness.

Innocence is ignorance.

Knowledge is corruption.

Even the so-called altruism of the great saints of the age was motivated by fear of divine retribution or hope of heavenly reward. At the end of it all, men were loathsome and fearful and would serve those who held power over them. How many souls had he broken, tempting them with the smallest rewards, watching them surrender their most cherished beliefs for promises of wealth, of influence, of carnal pleasure? And he had wrought their ruin with their their consent, watching them descend into depravity until he tired and deemed them unworthy, unfit to continue polluting the earth.

At the end of it all, humans were selfish.

Humans were self-serving.

His belief had been confirmed too often for him to see otherwise. When he'd surrendered all hope—when the smallest vestige of defiance to that gaping abysm had waned, he retreated into the shadows.

And then Lisa appeared from nowhere on his doorstep. He had been skeptical about her at first, believing she sought fame for herself, that she had embarked on a vainglorious, self-aggrandizing mission to perform great deeds.

Not very different from himself.

But despite his watchfulness, despite his waiting for her to falter and reveal her corruption, he had failed.

Lisa did not believe in the rewards of heaven or the punishments of hell like the faithful did, and yet… she understood devotion. He found in her a profound reverence for life. She sought to honor it, without the goal of attaining divine favor, without any fear of sin or other charges against humanity. She did it for the sake of the human spirit. For its potential. For the great beauty and goodness she believed lay in the most ordinary beings. And despite so much evidence to the virulent nature of humanity, her faith did not waver.

She does it because she believes it is right.

She decreed her own moral imperative and answered to her own conscience.

And what did it mean that she would turn her eyes upon him? Eyes filled with boundless kindness, burning hope, with that gift he had never possessed— to see goodness in everything that surrounded them.

He'd been loathe to admit it, but that gaze had been devastating. If such eyes could look at him and not recoil from the corruption they found, if such eyes could behold him without fear or hate or craven ambition…If she could look at him and see him for what he truly was and—still!—face him with that unwavering resolve…

And if she could even love him? The possibility unearthed an ache he had long thought impossible to experience.

What did we each do in the absence of a god?

I lacked imagination and resolve.

I turned to hate and violated every holy tenet.

She?

How simple her answer.

She chose to hope and to love.

Lisa, you may not count yourself among the faithful, but you are holier than most men of the cloth.

He grew agitated at his restless thoughts and cast his sight forth again. Once more, he could barely discern shadows.

He growled in frustration and covered his face with his hands, contemplating his own misery.

Lisa found herself struggling not to interject with her usual cynicism during that strange conversation with Mircea about magic. Once she had agreed to contemplate the possibility of a universe where magical laws coexisted and overlapped with natural ones, she understood that she needed to quell that impatience that swelled within her at the mention of what she had previously deemed impossible.

"I am no one's servant," she clarified to Mircea. "I merely sought out a man rumored to be very learned. In fact, when I set out to find him, I did not exactly know whom I was looking for. I had entertained various possibilities: a hidden order, perhaps a wealthy noble who had amassed a great deal of books and artifacts…"

"What was your intent?" Mircea's intense gaze probed her.

"I was frustrated. Despite my best efforts, my patients kept dying of ailments I knew were preventable or treatable."

"I see. So you were looking for a way... to thwart death?"

Lisa balked.

"No! I merely wanted to learn what I could about medicine, about the human body, so I could give my patients an opportunity to better fight illnesses and wounds. When that is not possible, I should like to ensure that my patients' final moments are not wracked with needless suffering. When I met—"

"Do not say his name!" Mircea quickly interrupted, raising his hand in a warning gesture. Lisa blinked a few times, mystified.

Say my name and I will come to you.

"The Dragon," she completed more cautiously.

"Do you know who he is, Lisa? What he has done?"

Unease stirred within her. Flashes of the pikes surfaced to her memory. A forest of barbarous violence, the fruits of wrath.

"He did…He did allude to his past as a warlord."

"A warlord! A warlord would be the great Patriarch of Constantinople compared to the Dragon!" He eyed her curiously. "You do not know who he is, do you?"

She almost stroked the tender spot on her neck before catching Mircea's bitter expression.

"During the course of his long life, the Dragon has been called many things: a demon, the bearer of the mark of Cain, an accursed Dacian king, an errant and doomed Crusader. Others tell that he was an adventurer who sought forbidden knowledge, undeterred by the immorality of the pacts he forged and acts he committed to achieve it."

"Which version of the story is correct, then? We never spoke of such matters: we spoke instead of science, of medicine, of literature..."

"I had hoped you would be able to tell me," he lamented, accepting she would not help elucidate further on any details. "Little is known of his origins. Even less is known about how he contracted his curse."

"His curse?"

"The Dragon has achieved immortality…but at a terrible cost." Mircea revealed. "But perhaps…you already know this much?"

"Lisa, you could be in mortal danger. The curse risks being spread to you."

She experienced a flood of unpleasant emotions: betrayal at the forefront.

I am not cursed, she calmed herself. She could not believe Țepeș would foist such a burden upon her. Of all the accusations that could be hurled against Țepeș, "liar" was not one. She believed, with deep conviction, that he had not deceived her so. And she truly believed he had not sought to harm her, despite his past.

"What if I told you if I could see whether you were well…" had begun the dire offer.

"He is a beast— a monster. He preys on the living, draining their blood to prolong his unnatural life."

She closed her eyes as if that would lessen the blow of the Elder's words—words that only days earlier would have been met with her customary dismissiveness. Strigoi, moroaice, vârcolacul, pricolici…A world that had only existed previously by the light of the fire, in tales spun during long winter nights as the wind whistled through the cracks of her father's shabby cottage had overtaken her reality. All those creatures were, she used to believe, personifications of the unknown: figurative, symbolic—a representation of misfortunes and hardships…Not their cause.

A monster.

She listened to Mircea describe the carnage wrought in the battlefields after Țepeș' unholy armies claimed victory, of how he went from an ally to devastating foe on a whim. He was ruthless, merciless, filled with hatred—he spared none his wrath. He had the ability to summon and unleash infernal creatures, hell-born beasts: a catalogue of mythical nightmares sprung to life.

"The Dragon is the embodiment of evil, Lisa. Evil is self-serving. It is his sole guiding principle: to please himself and only himself, with no concern for the wellbeing of others or for life. He is judge and executioner."

" In that, then, he is not different from boyar and voivode," she interrupted. "Perhaps his unnatural condition makes him stronger…but it seems that it is those most human pursuits to secure power that make him truly monstrous."

"Lisa!" Mircea rebuked her, a mix of worry and frustration eking into his tone. "Do not try to absolve him from his actions! Monsters like him have wrought destruction on the earth since time immemorial! These beings can only entrench themselves in this plane at the cost of others and blood has always been the gateway for such transgressive pacts."

An axis mundi, she remembered.

Even that much Țepeș tried to explain to me.

Lisa and the Elder sat in silence, presumably to allow all the gravity of his revelations to take root.

I have questions. So many questions.

Rain began to drum noisily on the roof. Thunder rumbled in the near distance.

Only one man can answer them: I must see for myself, with my own eyes, hear his words with my own ears.

You wander into this with your eyes closed, he'd warned her the night she had boldly caressed his face and sought his lips.

And how often you tried to open my eyes, she thought sadly.

Her expression hardened with nascent determination.

I need clarifications, explanations…She ventured a quick brush of her fingers across her neck. And reassurances.

I can't keep running away.

We must meet, she decided.

She found Mircea's expectant gaze upon her.

"I am going to return," she announced, unsure of how her decision would be received.

The Elder nodded in agreement.

"Yes, you must. Răscruce," he reminded her in a whisper. "The prophecy. It is clear to me, especially now. You have come to fulfill it. But…not like this. It is too dangerous. We must secure aid, first."

"Aid?" Lisa leaned forward, mystified.

"We can only assist you so much. We, Speakers, do not believe in violence. We are not warriors." He glanced over his shoulder, grimacing. "Although at times, I think some of us forget that," he muttered. "What I meant is that we must seek out those who have the strength and experience to deal with such…creatures."

Lisa felt a squeeze to her heart. A creature. A monster. She could not reconcile the description of the blood thirsty fiend to the man she knew—a brooding, difficult and temperamental man, one who she had guessed early on carried a heavy burden—but certainly no monster. The thought was interrupted by another realization.

There were those who hunted such beings.

What have I inadvertently set into motion?

A chilling fear overcame her. There would be no favorable outcome to such an endeavor.

I am a healer. I do not want innocent blood on my hands. That is not why I left my home behind and ventured into the world.

What have I done?

The Elder gripped her shoulder approvingly. "'Only you can lock the gate, only you can turn the key,'" he recited softly. "I have faith that with aid, you will seal away the fiend and his abominations forevermore."

In her mind a gruesome vision flashed:

She envisioned a killing blow struck against Țepeș. He placed her hand over his chest as blood bloomed from his wound.

Cold and still.

The only heart beating was hers.

It repulsed her viscerally. "I must leave," she muttered, suddenly filled with a panicky dread.

Mircea seemed to take her urgency to depart as a sign of eagerness to fulfill her role in that forsaken prophecy.

"I understand, Lisa: but you must wait. The guards are searching for you." Thunder exploded overhead. "Take shelter here with us tonight. Give us time to send word to a potential ally: Lord Belmont."

She pondered it, but the unsettled feeling only grew stronger. The witch-hunting conjurers, Mircea's stories, that horrid vision, were all overwhelming. She wanted to flee, collect her thoughts.

Lisa went through the motions of preparing to go to sleep, laying her satchel aside, settling over the hay, her cloak sheltering her against the damp cold. She waited patiently, eyes closed, letting her mind drift off into a light slumber. She waited a couple long hours until the voices in the stable became hushed, movement ceased, and the fire began to flicker. As quietly as she could, she stood and hauled up her awaiting satchel. She hoped the Speakers would not see her as ungrateful for leaving that way—without a thank you or a farewell. She regretted she would have to leave the stable door unlocked, but at that hour, it was unlikely anyone would be wandering about the town. She lifted the wooden beam carefully, gritting her teeth at every creak that eked from her dislodging it. Outside, the night was crisp and a light mist fell over the muddy streets. As she prepared the slip out the door, she ventured a quick glance back toward the Speakers to assure herself that all was well. To her surprise, one figure sat at attention, her filmy eyes glistening in the faint light.

Lisa froze, wary that the oldest Sypha would sound the alarm. What did she fear from the Speakers exactly, she did not know. She knew, however, that she did not want to play a role in anyone's demise. The old woman appeared to stare past her.

"Go," she muttered so softly, Lisa would have not understood if it hadn't been for the nod toward the door. "You alone can heal," she whispered.

Lisa was struck still, staring at the beam she was holding up and ventured a sad grin. Did she mean help Țepeș? Or did she mean any action she perpetrated against him would be healing—as in stopping him from committing further atrocities?

The oldest Sypha bowed her head briefly toward her before curling back into her coarse blanket.

Lisa rested the beam against the stable wall before slipping out the door. Once outside, she took care to shut the door as quietly as she could. The cold air chased any somnolence away and renewed her resolve.

Her small precautions, though, were all for naught. The moment she stepped away from the stable, a searing pain swept through her so fiercely that she dropped to her knees. When she managed to catch her breath, she attempted to push herself off the ground, finding that she was trembling, her sight clouding.

What is this?

She summoned all her strength to haul herself off the slick, muddy ground pelted by the falling rain.

Voices on alert resounded and she thought perhaps she had finally betrayed herself and awakened the Speakers. A surge of shame ran through her when she thought of how she would explain her ill-fated escape after all their kindness. But the hand that fell on her shoulder and gripped it roughly was not Mircea's. Before she could make sense of what was happening, she was yanked up from the ground, another pair of hands clutching her arms tightly.

"Here! Here! It is as the Master said! The witch!"

Lisa's eyes widened at the unfamiliar voice and its triumphantly vicious tone.

Echoes of the damning chorus spread through the group of men that had rapidly assembled around her.

"The witch!" they repeated, to her terror, as her vision was almost completely obscured by a hood partially pulled over her head. Her arms were yanked back and the rough bite of coarse rope encircled her wrists.

She recognized the conjurer who had gone to Țepeș' castle as he emerged among the armed men. His bloated face approached hers, examining her appraisingly, his waxen countenance made even more grotesque by his rotting grin.

"You tripped my ward," he uttered delightedly. "Proof," he continued, breaking eye contact with her to address the soldiers, "that she has been tainted by the Dragon's curse," he declared. Without a further word, he forced a balled up rag into her mouth before tugging the hood down completely over her head.

"To the church," he commanded. "With haste. I would imagine the Dragon knows by now that we have something of value to him: let us not make it easy for him to retrieve."

She was spurred forward by a sharp blow aimed between her shoulder blades, causing her to cry out as she stumbled forth into darkness.

A/N: I've been writing, I swear. This was another tough chapter that feels like it's been undergoing editing for weeks…

I want to thank Meldeea, over in AO3, who is Romanian and sent me some fantastic feedback and observations on language and culture: mulțumesc! I've gone back and reviewed some of my notes in previous chapters in response to them. Any mistakes found here are mine and I am always, always open to learning.

Ok, summer school's in session!

* "Non habebis deos alienos coram me" Exodus 20:3-5— "Thou shalt have no other gods but Me". This is is quintessential "jealous God" from the Old Testament. Something interesting about feudalism is that it shared much of its pageantry with the church (for example, in many Latin languages, both nobles and God were addressed as 'Lord'). Not surprising, for a system of governing that justified securing the power of a few over many as the indication of divine favor (regicide being one of worst crimes and affronts to God's will—such as we see in Macbeth and Dante's Inferno).

* Strigoi, moroaice, vârcolacul, pricolici: In mythology, strigoi are powerful supernatural beings often associated with sorcery and magic. There are strigoi viu (living sorcerers/magical entities?) who curse others and cause all kinds of misfortune. They share traits with vampires and have to be buried with certain rituals observed at death to ensure they stay underground…Strigoi mort (dead sorcerers) return from the grave to live among their relatives, and as they do so, their relatives grow weaker and weaker until they die themselves. It is believed that the vampire mythos evolved from these stories about powerful restless dead that preyed on the living. Vârcolacul and pricolici are other cursed beings, also undead. While both terms can be merged with vampire persona, these demonic beings often present themselves physically as werewolves (and in some cases, such as the vârcolacul, as goblins). The whole werewolf aspect may seem irrelevant at first, but vampires have been known to take the shape of wolves (such as Count Dracula, in Bram Stoker's novel).

* The Order of the Dragon : "(Latin: Societas Draconistarum, literally 'Society of the Dragonists') was a monarchical chivalric order for selected nobility, founded in 1408 by Sigismund von Luxembourg who was King of Hungary (r. 1387–1437) at the time and later became Holy Roman Emperor (r. 1433–1437). It was fashioned after the military orders of the Crusades, requiring its initiates to defend the cross and fight the enemies of Christianity, in particular the Ottoman Empire." (From Wikipedia). Vlad's father became a member of the order and adopted some of the order's symbols, such as the dragon emblem with its tail coiled around its neck, to his heraldry and the name "Dracul" meaning "the dragon" but also "the devil"…I like the double meaning because in the anime, while the historical figure is loosely merged with the mythical one, it is logical to surmise that Dracula in the anime preceded the Order of the Dragon. In that case, let's go with the other meaning of the word: "drac" as "devil". WORKS FOR ME!

*Some cool trivia, by the way: The Order of the Dragon STILL exists and its leader for the past two years has been Prince Vladimir Karadjordjevic. You can read more about him by Googling his name (I have links on AO3, too).

Spoiler: He's not a vampire.