Aria of the Ascending Soul
Written by: Lady Lunar Phoenix
A/N: I hope this is a bit more cleaner.
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The room was made mostly of stone, it normally served as a work out room or training room Arikado, but for tonight it would serve a slightly different purpose. The use of torches and candle lighting made the shadows longer and more prone to dance on the edge of vision. Artificial light was not used in the room, since the Castle didn't use electricity. If the eyes could only focus under florescent lighting they would be weak in the Castle. Weakness in the Castle was a death sentence and this room was the only one that held a strange sense of perpetual danger.
Tonight, Soma was going to use it for a different purpose since it was the closest to making him feel like he was in the Castle. All along the floors rested candle holders of all kinds, each cradling an unlit candle for its own. He didn't need them lit, nor did he need light for what he was looking to do. Tonight Soma was going to find himself a teacher to help him learn how to use his abilities, an older teacher, wiser in the arts.
Alchemy, the oldest form of science, long before the discovery of hydrogen and oxygen, before the ability to pierce the smallest grain of sand. The secret, forbidden knowledge that didn't need the power of souls to use. If the Church was going to deny him his souls, then he would use the 'other' talents at his disposal. But he wasn't a fool and he knew he needed someone experienced in what he was looking to learn. This was a tradition taught in secret, not something that could be just found in the internet.
Which meant diving deeper into his own psyche and find the oldest memories he held that knew the art. Experience was the best teacher in the world, and Soma carried over 900 years of it. Dracula had a beginning, a humanity that existed before the monster. He just had to find the memories of those days, find the person he was, before the vampire consumed all of him.
Meditation he knew, one couldn't be friends with a priestess in training without learning about it. Meditation and cleansing, two of the most tedious forms of study that he had ever endured while at the shrine. He wasn't great on meditation as a whole, unable to grasp the concept until Mina's father had told him about 'guided' meditation.
"Not all people are suited for the empty thought style of meditation Cruz-san. For those there is something called 'guided meditation'. Where the soul places an actual scene before the person to view. You don't control what your mind presents, you just let it go where it wants you to. You can explore where your thoughts take you to your hearts content."
"What makes it any different than day dreaming? And why is it considered 'guided'?"
"Guided meditation is often used in groups, each experience is unique even as the group takes the 'trip'. It's used for helping a person resolve issues and is a loosely planned out trip. A session may begin with a group being told they see a bridge in the distance and beyond that the issue they need to address is located. But a bridge can be any size, any shape or design, so for the group they know they need to 'find' the bridge, but how the bridge takes shape is left to their own inner selves. But a person can also take such a trip on their own, if they are practiced enough to let what needs to speak with them come forth on their own. Which is why it is different from day dreaming. When you day dream you plan out every nuance of the scenario, in guided meditation you're just as much a third party viewing a scene."
Soma needed to find those memories, the cliff note version of his memories wasn't going to cut it. He couldn't risk asking Yoko or Julius, he was sure they would be against him trying to touch those memories. And why wouldn't they? When it was possible that Dracula would assume complete control over Soma?
Because in truth there was no difference. Treating his past and present like they belonged to two separate entities was dangerous. Soma 'was' Dracula, like it or not, and he needed to know how to defend himself without his souls. He understood their concern, and honestly he preferred that Julius think whatever way kept his hand off Vampire Killer.
Well the sarcastic side of himself was quick to point out that with the use of the internet 'anyone' could see any level of hell. Sure, the senseless slaughter of hundreds or thousands was terrible, but if he wanted to brace himself for impact he just needed the net. War zones were plentiful and after hours of viewing the uncensored news, there was nothing really virginal about the human soul. He just had to take the extra step and accept that he was one of the monsters that modern journalists wrote about. There was a strange form of comfort in knowing that, even without portals to hell, humans could be just as bad as him.
He wouldn't have the benefit of a teacher or a guide in the living world to guide him. But he knew that the forgotten side of himself would serve just as well. As such Soma stripped himself of his coat, since part of getting to 'that' point meant being able to avoid all distractions. Including the shivering that may come from being chilled, unlike Western styles that encouraged keeping warm. Which was nice, but could just as easily get a person to fall asleep and dream rather than meditation.
The candles would be of use to channel out any possible energy he built up from trying this stunt. There was no guides on what happened when a Dark Lord tried something like this, so he hoped that the energy could just ignite the candles and nothing more. Soma settled himself down in the center of the room, folding his long legs and settling into the 'lotus' posture. Refraining from laying straight on the ground since he would just as likely fall asleep as run into his memories. Blowing out the candle he had used to enter the room, he set the candle holder down in front of him. Letting his mind be soothed by the scent of smoking candle wick as he closed his eyes and began to slow his breathing down, trying to keep a simple, smooth, slower rhythm.
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The world was as black behind his eyelids as it was in the darken work out room. The room was as chilled as death, seeping into the weave of his clothes to chill him. There was an urge the shiver that he fought down and focused more on blanking his thoughts of anything going on around him. Over time he saw them, eyes of various colors staring out at him. Red, yellow, silver, blue, brown, purple, green, all the colors of a demonic rainbow on display for him. They circled him endlessly, their shapes lost to the darkness around him. But he could feel them on a primal level, stalking on two feet or four, flapping wings or slithering on the ground he knew them all.
Animated objects, demons, weres, elementals spirits, monsters that flew, swam, tunneled and more. Demons and monsters he had slain in his trip through the castles, waiting for him to call them to him. Perhaps to the uninitiated their presence could be viewed a nightmare that would send a person screaming back into their own body. But this was what he wanted, the first rings of protection he knew of. For these were the souls that he called on when in danger or fearing for his life in battle. These came ready to lend their abilities to him, from increasing his physical abilities, providing him with energy attacks, or remolding his own flesh to something massive.
The first lines of defense for himself rather than give in directly to the darkest part of himself.
"The Ring."
"We hate the ring."
"Get it off."
"Take it off Master."
"We can't help you with it on."
Multiple voices hissed and growled, about the ring. They knew that the ring was blocking his ability to call upon their powers. They knew and they were not happy about it in the slightest. But they were here and it was a comfort that when it was removed he could count on them once more.
But for now, he let his body 'move' forward to continue seeking deeper within himself. It was always difficult to start learning this process. Convincing the mind that the body was moving while in reality it didn't. The full sensation of movement in the mind, the way the hand would feel as it gripped the knee to help push himself up. The way his body felt as it moved sliding from sitting to standing.
He could see the room exactly as he left it, going so far as to turn around and see himself sitting on the floor in a darken room. Yet in his current state there was no true 'darkness' for him to be blinded by. Indeed it was a great deal like when he used the ghost's soul back when he was in his own castle. But he wouldn't be limited to just a small distance, this was something that didn't need a soul to perform the task. The Ghost had given him a clue on how this was done, but now to do it on his own unaided.
The room was full of his demons, their eyes locked on him or his body, watching over him from a distance. But they parted like the sea as he turned towards the door of the room. The metaphorical journey was about to begin. He had to keep his mind blank, let the destination shape itself, because Dracula 'would' design their meeting spot. Don't control it, the soul would do it for him, he just had to let what happen, happen. So it allowed this room to be the starting room, and once he stepped out he would be the plaything of his subconscious.
So when he walked to the door and allowed it to open under his own will, the empty space before him didn't surprise him. There was no land mass, or bridge, to guide him to where he needed to be. No, he would have to take a leap of faith, plunge into the darkness of his own soul and see what lay at the bottom. But he had already walked into Chaos, the primal beginnings itself. This? He told himself 'this was nothing'.
The darkness was deep and visceral, he floated within it, drowning in darkness that didn't take his breath away. But this was meditation he knew he wasn't 'in' water, so he struggled against the nature of afterbirth. Babies in the womb did not hold their breaths, they breathed in the liquid until they were born and forced to accept the air. Breathing it in and out, that was going to be the first step, breathing in this liquid without fear. Some part of his mind tried to remind him what this liquid was, because it was far too thick to be water.
No, if this was his darker self then he knew what he was floating inside of and the 'reality' of that was enough to make him frown. Not in annoyance or displeasure but at the sheer immaturity of the whole idea. "You know I'm here, we can disperse of the game don't you think?"
A voice that wasn't lost to the liquid he was floating in, like sonar to the ears of the side of himself that was here. Then just as suddenly as it began, the blood sea was gone, washed away in a wave of nothingness to be replaced by an ornate throne room. A single long piece of ruby red carpet laid upon the ground towards a matching pair of steps. A throne room, with a dais that rose up above his head. There was no doorway into the room or out, nor windows to be seen anywhere. The walls were made of newly washed stone, with banners hanging from a ceiling so high he couldn't see what tied the fabric into staying in the air. Maybe nothing, maybe it just hung there because it was supposed to.
Candles floated all along the air creating a sea of golden light that illuminated the room for him to see by. Yet nothing held those candles, there would probably be no spilled wax from them either. But if Dracula thought Soma was going to stand at the bottom of the dais like a commoner? Uh no. So he walked up the steps of the dais, towards the empty throne noting the absolute stillness of the throne room. The banners were still and the little golden flames on each candle was still enough to be fake. But the carpet sank down like normal good plush carpeting should, while a chill air gently touched his cheeks despite all the candles about him.
He didn't need to look down, he knew he was still wearing his jeans and turtleneck, hell he knew his long white coat was still hanging off his shoulders like he normally wore it. When he wasn't killing things with a sword or souls that is. Yet despite the layers of clothes, he still felt cold. But the room was changing even as he walked. Each step up turned the throne above him ever blacker, it molded itself to something with smooth curves and an ebony finish. Skulls at the edge of the armrests so that he could rest his hands upon them. The seat cushion and the backrest looked thick and comfortable, something suitable for a long talk, pure white in color it contrasted beautifully with the ebony throne; ebony and ivory.
"Well if this is the only way we're going to 'talk'," Soma noted aloud as he reached the throne. He sat down and found across from him a mirror of the throne and dais had somehow molded itself from the ground up. Without a sound to alert him of the sudden change, he found himself looking at a seeming reflection.
Across from him, the twin throne had turned painfully white, so white that it seemed to defy the golden glow of the candles and retain its sharp color. So sharp that it cut through the shadows leaving it utterly shapeless save for its outer most line, with an inner whorl of darkest black for a back rest that dripped down into becoming the seat. As Soma sat, so sat his other, as reclined and indifferent about the world around him as though he had been called in to discuss a topic of only minor importance.
"Well, you're probably wondering why I called you here today," Soma quipped lightly with a faint shrug.
"I suppose it has something to do with an enormous amount of boredom, and the increasing dissatisfaction with the supposed 'teaching'."
Soma settled into his own seat, an incredibly comfortable one considering the style and form it had taken. Directly across from him, Dracula looked about as interested as a guy forced to see a musical production. Well, for the both of them, it was going to be more like a romantic musical production. Simply on the grounds that they were being dragged into this situation and knew that by the end, they were going to have to hear about it in some fashion or another.
Yoko and Julius, not to mention Arikado would have enough words to express their displeasure to fill an encyclopedia. Blood red eyes narrowed onto Soma as Dracula frowned at some inner thought that they shared.
"I never got to experience a 'musical production', nor anything else of entertainment value in this new age," Dracula noted in a bored tone. "The last time I was awake, the world had been ripe with war, from one equator to the other and everything in between."
"Why? Why do we keep returning to this world? What's in it for us to keep fighting the same battle over and over again? Take away the constant defeats, there's no justification for it," Soma asked, a very important starting question one would think.
"The same battle is it?" Dracula raised a snow white eyebrow at that, before shrugging his black clad shoulders. "Why do you think it be the 'same', its never the exact same. Different forms of warfare have their uses to, its interesting to see how man has progressed on their path to self annihilation. A hundred years slumber, and I, rather 'we', see how far man has gone in his hate, his greed, and his need to destroy."
Soma blinked at that, he shook his snow white haired head slowly, not confident on the point that Dracula was trying to make.
"Oh? I suppose you want to believe in the 'balance' concept these easterners have, 'Ying and Yang' I believe?" He stretched his long legs out, the light absorbed by the very black sheen of his pants and reflecting off his dress shoes. Even his long black coat didn't reflect any light as it spilled down behind his legs onto the red, red carpet. His voice was a Latin purr of contempt to balance Soma's slide from Japanese to Spanish. Three different languages, eventually they would talk on the same true level, but until then.
"I wouldn't be your reincarnation if I were 'that' blind a fool. We both know that the core of much of humanities' false 'generosity' is in a deep seated fear." Soma could see the smirk revealing a sharp fang, the gleam of victory in the eye of his other self. "When the only thing stopping people from senseless murder and out right acts of cruelty and greed is fear of eternal damnation, then there is no point in arguing that humanity has a true sense of compassion. For the most part."
The fang disappeared and the eyes hardened against Soma in annoyance. "'For the most part'? In other words you believe there is a glimmer of true compassion in these useless sacks of blood and meat?" Dracula stood up at that, the coat floating about him at the swift motion the same as Soma's always did. "Just because you believe the sky is purple doesn't make it so. Just because you believe that the Earth is the center of the universe, it doesn't make it so. Every one hundred years We return to this world to start the war again to see how far the race has progressed in its quest for self destruction. But do you think that we have not risen at any other times, but then? Have you forgotten the Black Mass?"
Dracula was rather impressive standing there, pitch black business suit on the level that Arikado would wear. A pristine white shirt, pressed to perfection and a ruby red cummerbund around his waist. But for all that royal dress up, Soma felt as though the black was meant to absorb the light Dracula himself could no longer find inside.
"No, I don't know what a 'Black Mass' is. That is why we are here, to learn, so that I can read the signs as they present themselves to us. Further more, you're wrong, the sky 'is' purple, at dawn and dusk. Not for long, but it happens, just as true compassion does materialize in the world from time to time." Soma didn't stand up, nor allow himself the chance to show fear or intimidation. It wasn't safe, Dracula was still a threat to himself, after all.
But his points earned him some measure of respect it would have seemed, Dracula's eyes took on a speculative expression. Perhaps he was rethinking what he rated his incarnations' intelligence at. Then he smoothly settled back down into his throne, any anger or annoyance fading as quickly as smoke on an autumn wind. "A Black Mass is when those who serve us, slay a virgin female over our corpse so that we may rise again. In short."
"... Ok so this is going to sound very off base and incredibly stupid of me to ask, but why a 'virgin female'?" Soma asked, he had hoped that the whole 'virgin sacrifice' was just a lot of hocus pocus. But to think there was a 'purpose'?
"Why?" Dracula asked, his eyes a golden hue of amusement as Soma shot him a look that could kill with speed and accuracy better then Vampire Killer. "Oh I see, 'I' am not allowed to have a sense of humor. Humph well. The reason is in the older religions that most people forget or ignore. The Modern churches denounce the fact that God at one time was a pair. That he had a Wife... Oh come now, how could a supposedly purely male entity create women? You'd have a time trying to find the old books that touch on the subjects. It's not our fault that they're so sheepish that they forget the line about creating man and woman in the image of God. Had to work with something, God isn't a trans... a trans verse? Trans tight?"
Soma had to stare for a moment in pure unabashed amazement as he listened to what was apparently Dracula's attempt to remember the word 'transvestite'. "I think the word you are looking for is 'transvestite' and back on subject about the whole 'virgin female'?" No one would ever believe this conversation ever happened. Not in a million years.
"Yes, that one, God isn't one. You get bored and start listening to witches and you get a great deal of insight to other religions. That aside, there was a school of thought that women who had yet lain with a man had a greater deal of power then one who had. This coming from the pent up sexual energy that needs to find a release. Until they had been with a man."
"Ok, so they have a lot of power, why kill them?" Soma asked, abrupt as this lesson was, he found himself curious about the matter. Another thing no one would ever believe him about. Dracula apparently spent 900 years becoming an incredibly open minded sadist.
"They become a cauldron of power, their wombs hold within it the power of life itself, for it is from the womb that a baby is born from. The Black Mass, takes the raw pent up energy, focuses it upon the time of the virgin's death and channels it through that womb, unto us and revives us with that energy." Dracula explained, his eyes calm, calculating as he watched Soma.
"But we're alive again, so that won't be happening anytime soon," Soma replied with certainty only to see Dracula shake his head. "What? Why do it? Graham and Celia are both dead, why try for a Black Mass? We're here."
"Silly, still a child I see," Dracula mused, his smooth features sliding into a near sympathetic expression. "Do you think that they readily accept 'us' as having returned? Even now? What do you see sitting across from yourself?"
"I see me, you look exactly like me save for the eye colors, the fangs and clothes..." Soma replied, because it was the truth. No ancient vampire sat before him, the white hair was his style and cut, the eyes were the shape of a mixed blooded Japanese/Spanish mix youth. Soma never had a set idea what his past would look like, so his expectations had been rather limited. So Dracula's question was rather odd to him.
"Exactly, through out history we have ever been an older gentleman, or at least a full adult in his mid twenties. Not everyone is going to fall over and believe that we, looking thus, are who we deny yet accept ourselves to be. So they use the Black Mass, over and over again. They are but trying to see if a 'real', as what would fit their ideal, Dracula arises. Eventually, soon, they'll accept the truth for what it is. Then the fun will begin in earnest."
"What? You mean these Masses have already been taking place? Why did I miss it?" Soma asked standing up in alarm. But Dracula waved him back to his seat with a careless gesture.
"Ask your 'guardian', he has been pulling those who would come to us towards him and dealing with them himself. But maybe one day you'll meet them. All who die under a killers' hand go to the Castle... What? Where else do you think I get our army? Humanity itself is a wonderful supplier to our needs."
"I... should go... it's probably getting late, even for me," Soma finally replied. His eyes were shadowed with doubts and thoughts while Dracula waved him away.
As he watched himself dissolve from his feet up into a cloud of black bats he heard his voice speaking. "Come back sometime, I'll guide you to the very beginning, you can use alchemy to make up for the lack of your other abilities then."
The thrones and walls turned into sand, sliding away from him, the threads of the banners, and carpet into so much string. Leaving Soma sitting in a room, legs crossed eyes shut and darkness all around him. Only to have it lit by a sudden gentle gold hue just beyond his limbs. Quiet, the room was quiet except the soft 'woosh' from when the candles lit themselves. Soma opened his eyes to a room filled with the gentle golden light of every candle lit and flickering in the room.
But something was wrong, proper meditation should have left him relaxed, comfortable if a bit chilled. Only he wasn't, his whole body was tense about something, something that was dancing on the edges of his understanding. He decided to send the servants to tend to the candles, since now that he knew what to look for he was going to check the internet. He wasn't sure if he could find what he was looking for. No one was crass enough to post if a person was a virgin or not when they were murdered. But Dracula had said that the murders were still happening.
He grabbed his coat pulling it on to try and rewarm his body as he quickly strode to the door.
"Avenge me. Kill them. Kill them all."