Castlevania: Aria of the Ascending Soul
Written By: Lady Lunar Phoenix
Beta By: Lady Lunar Phoenix
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Stretching forth towards the life that existed beyond it outside the bothersome seal, the hallways began grinding the stones against each other. Sliding outward to extend the length of the walls, new stones stirred to life from the dust and dirt that was created. Holes blinked out of existence with stones, even as the towers expanded and grew. The tiles of the numerous roofs slipped down new tiles, while the windows righted themselves.
The exterior wasn't the only thing that was changing, the interior was evolving as well. All around her, Elizabetha watched as the castle sprang to life, from the rugs to the banners. The furniture reshaped itself into designs she readily recognize as from both her life times. Paintings along the wall turned skeletal, flames burst into existence in place of eyes on some. Human eyeballs peered down from others.
Appearing no different than when the Chaos was still an anchor to the Castles' existence. Elizabetha watched as the thin lines between set stones on the floor gave rise to black smoke. It slithered upward filling into inhuman shapes. Taking form as new beings began to manifest about the place.
A resurgence of monsters began to amble out, new Wargs began to romp about the room before the maids chased them outside. Bats flew through the air, towards open windows to take wing into the night... the night... Elizabetha made her way to one such window as it struck her that she was staring out once more unto the night sky. The castle had left the seal? Not just reacting to the presence of a sudden surge of emotion or power from her Lord Husband. But actually 'left' the seal?
"Death? Death may I speak with you?" Elizabetha called out as she studied the night sky, the black ceiling with its diamonds and pink moon.
"My Lady?" Death intoned as it appeared, hovering over her shoulder.
"This is different than the other times the castle has returned to the world... is this due to the severing of its connection to the Chaos?" She inquired, a small frown on her face as she turned her gaze back within the castle.
An awkward question for Death, after all It had no more an idea than the Lady in truth. When Dracula had laid claim on the Castle itself, it had been merely that. A castle, no more enchanted or alive than any other stone structure made by man. When Its Master had laid claim to the Castle at first there 'had' been no effort to change anything. He had left it merely the same as before, a basic structure to house his coffin.
Yet his mind could not be quieted into simply sleeping, and the thoughts of Walters' own abode had stirred ideas into Its Master. Granted Walter had been limited in power, his castle one of solid structure, built by man. The beings that came to reside in it merely tempered the grounds to their own needs. So of course Its Master had to go beyond it, forging the castle by fusing it with the very essence of Chaos.
"By all rights, severed from the Chaos as it is, it should have returned back to being but a normal structure." Death began before begrudgingly conceding, "yet clearly it is still not just empowered, but alive. It is feeding on the world itself, were I to make a guess, I would say that it is sustaining its life by feeding vampiricly shall we say," the entity answered.
"Oh... Oh Mathias I told you to not hurt the humans..." Elizabetha sighed disheartened. 'Why can you not find peace? Our son struggles so hard to give you that...'
"My Lady I can not answer that, however; at the same time I can not discern the nature of those who are arriving here. Neither yourself or I know how the change in the Master has affected the Castle. Until we do, well..."
'It appears no different than when my Lord Husband was enraged... yet I can't put my finger on it... it feels a bit off...' Elizabetha thought to herself as she looked about at the growing number of monsters.
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"That... ow... isn't how being a spirit is supposed to feel," Charlotte groaned as she clutched at her aching head. The world came back a bright, glaring focus swaying from side to side as if she was on a boat. Light framed her vision as stars burst in front of her eyes, before slowly, too slowly, settling back down. Nearby she could hear the remembered friendly sound of a warm fire crackling away. Soft pops and sizzling sounds that brought back pleasant memories of her and the family. As her brain began to correct and make proper sense of what she was staring at. She found her skin tingling with an almost electric charge.
Before her logic kicked in and reminded her that she was oh... oh yeah... DEAD.
"Welcome back to the land of the dead," Soleil quipped with a fake lightness to his tone off to the side. "Not going to lie, I was worried when you showed up unconscious," the hunter confessed.
Charlotte stood up even as she scurried to catch sight of the hunter. Causing her to see that they were in some sitting room by the looks of things. The floor was cleanly swept stone with a large clean rug that covered it. The walls were made of stone, with a fireplace quietly crackling off to the side. On either side of said fire was a pair of thick comfortable chairs.
Both were occupied with living people sound asleep, with tablets resting on their laps. The very picture of a pair who fell asleep reading before bed. There was a desk against the wall on the right of the fireplace with a small white box resting on it. With a bookshelf near by loaded with of yet unexplored topics by Charlotte.
"Where?" she asked as she floated over to Soleil, her brows furrowed in confusion. "Do you know what happened?" She asked as she cast her gaze to the ceiling as though there might be a clue hidden up there.
"That is a loaded question," the man answered with a slight wince. "We're in Dracula's Castle."
Charlotte's head snapped down so she could fix her gaze on the man, her eyes expressive of her disbelief. "Does this look like something you would find in the Castle of Dracula? Clean floors? A 'modern' writing desk? This looks like a room you find in a hotel or a place in a normal castle. Not 'the' castle." She argued as she gestured outward at the clearly modern ascetic. "It even has an intercom system," she pointed out gesturing at the box.
Because yes, that 'was' a writing desk, but not the thick wooden desks of ages past, the lines were the smooth, sharp angles of a machines' cut. The white box had the design of an intercom system that made some sense, as opposed to a cord and bell. Only she could see his confusion when she mentioned 'intercom'.
"Hmm you saw the phones people were using? Its like that, only set up differently, like you can only reach certain boxes and it has a limited range." She explained, striving to keep things as simple as she could. Some of the clans were intensely interested in the modern world, but the hunters were a bit of a mix bag in regards to their interest.
"I don't have any idea either. But when the walls that were keeping us out shattered, well one minute we were trying to get in. Next minute we're sucked into the castle itself, all I saw was it hovering over the air... Absorbing us..."
Panicked shrieks outside the room cut Soleil off and grabbed the pairs attention. Momentarily forgetting that they couldn't do anything about it. They rushed outside right into a hall of Chaos.
A long, rich wine red carpet ran the length of the floor, scones lined the wall with lit torches. Windows were covered with matching curtains while undead servants scurried about in a near frantic pace. About the area were random humans collapsing on the ground, their flesh contorted, as hair, scales, feathers, any manner of things started to emerge. The cries of alarm twisted into pain, be they howls, shrieks or any other manner of sound. New limbs burst out from the bodies, all along the hallway, as a sickening realization of just what the hunters were bearing witness to struck.
Then the laughter came. Slow, pained breaths, panted out, became laughter, dazed and delirious. The laughter turned raucous, wild, insane. Victorious.
For some.
Charlotte was confounded by her surroundings. The room at her back had been perfectly normal, a style of room she had seen on television travel shows. Yet just floating through a single door and she was back in the castle that she had traveled only twice in her life. Neither time had there been a room that had appeared so utterly normal or modern.
Before she could even think further, Soleil tapped her wrist to get her attention as he took off. Leaving her following behind, where in the distance of the hallway she could see a human shrinking against the wall. Unlike the others who were turning into monsters, the woman cowered. Her clothes were office fare, her hair had been done up in a prim and proper bun. Now it was starting to unravel as she took in the nightmare before her.
"I heard..." Another door opened and a dark skinned man stepped outside of another room. Only to freeze in shock as he took stock of the hallway, where a zombie maid was trying to coax a newly made beast back.
Savage delight howled out of the thing as it lashed out, its beastly paw ripped the zombie up from the ground. It was broad shoulder and stood on its hind legs, the fur was shaggy yet to call it a 'were' felt off. The jaw was too short, the ears lacked the pointed nature of a wolf and retained a human's roundness causing it to flop down almost bloodhoundesque. The tail was elongated to a length associated with cats, yet moved with the stiffness of long sticks connected at flexible joints.
'These aren't Dark Children, they're man but these aren't the forms I know of. Somethings' wrong,' Soleil found himself thinking as he reached the side of the monster. A thought that was reinforced as he saw the monster turn to look directly at him, the pupils were wrong. Cat eyes that bulged in the center that were clearly looking at him despite being dead...
"Is... is he..." Charlotte voiced her confusion as she approached and saw how the transformed human looked at Soleil.
Would be confusion was suddenly illuminated like a brick to the back of the head as she realized the situation. They were ghosts, spirits of the dead in a castle that was occupied by spirits, why 'shouldn't' they be visible? Yet no one seemed able to see her, the monster looked only at Soleil questioningly.
"Was that screaming I heard?" Other doors opened, further down the hallways, though not all were voiced. Confusion followed by screams and door slams were followed as other monsters who had yet been approached charged forward. Senseless abominations running rampant as the beast that Soleil grabbed the attention of took a useless swipe at the hunter.
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The pirate came to with the deep thud that matched the pounding in his head. One too many drinks could do that to a man. Pirate or no. But 'not' to a deadman and as he laid there the realization that he was 'feeling' anything alarmed him into opening his eyes. Stone walls surrounded him rising ever higher. Massive gears hung suspended by large bars turning eternally as a clock ticked off the time. But with full awareness came the dissipation of 'feeling' anything, more a ghost limb telling him he felt something. Only the 'limb' was his whole body.
High above he could see a few monsters, their postures relaxed, bird of limbs and human woman of body. That alone used to tell him where he probably was. Then tales from his fellow hunters enlightened him that as much as he 'wanted' to assume any tower with monsters was Draculas' Castle. Sometimes, a castle was just a castle with monsters inside.
The trip had dragged him through the core of the world, yanked down into the ground he would have seen nothing except layers upon layers of the earth. If he had a torch or a candle, traveling through seemingly endless solid matter would have been possibly interesting. Instead, 'I guess I took a nap...' he realized as he began to float about the tower.
'Well back to work,' Grant thought to himself as he floated out of the tower through the wall. A passing thought of the irony if he was able to find Alucard in the castle, sleeping in another coffin. The way they first met him all those years ago. 'We 'were' a bit of a trio of assholes to you weren't we Al? Didn't think 'bout the fact that we were towing along the son of the monster we were going to kill.' Grant thought, something that had become a regular thought in his head as of late.
Outside the clock tower he could see that he was pretty elevated already. Below him was a variety of buildings, spanning outward with a garden visible in the distance. Ahead of him though was only the night sky, sprinkled with stars and a very pink... 'Huh, should the moon look like that?' he wondered and floated off though he kept looking up at it. Looming large over head he could see a great deal thanks to it, even if everything held a slight pinkish.
Below he could see the outer walls of the castle approaching, and for the most part he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Oh there was a figure or so, and passingly he wondered how many...
WHAM!
One moment he was idly taking in his surroundings as he resumed his search the next he felt the very solid very real impact of a wall. Alarm bells went off in his head as he looked at what he flew into and saw nothing more than empty air. Yet when he stuck his hand out, he was confronted by what felt to be a solid wall. As sturdy and stable as the walls behind him as part of the castle.
"The hell? What type of castle has walls that keeps spirits from leaving?" He asked aloud utterly perplexed. Until what he said finally struck him and he found himself feeling all manners of stupid. He looked down to search the ground more closely only to realize that this castle was 'very' high up... Unrealistically so in fact... He couldn't see lakes or any of the usual visual markers that he had heard about regarding Dracula's castle... but...
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Simon stood next to a book, his hands behind his back and his stitched on face showing no emotion as he looked down at the modestly bound journal. Magic was not his forte regardless if it was wrapped in prayers or spellbooks. Perhaps Juste would have been better suited to this one sided discussion. But the spellcaster was elsewhere in the Vatican helping deal with this sudden chaos. Besides, it wasn't as though either of them could 'answer' the Pope, even if he typed or wrote it down. It just wasn't safe anymore.
"Is there a way you can find objects the way you can find children?" His Holiness asked, his voice low in concern.
As much as Simon wanted to retort that he wasn't a bloodhound, either by gesture, words, or writing. There was something in the way the older man asked that gave him pause. Granted he didn't have the heightened senses of an animal. The way the man sat, with the appearance of weight on his shoulders. The slight dip in posture and was that fatigue in the corners of the mans' eyes?
If it was 'that' important...
'Well looking for items is better than looking for kids, at least the items don't move about.' Simon thought as he finally resigned himself and nodded.
'I'm going to need to take the Clan back to Alucards' place I think. We need privacy from our little Exorcist killer...' Simon decided as he bent down to pick up the book. 'Though if the book Juste found was, as the Pope believes, part of a 'series' and not a stand alone... We still have the language barrier of translating it.'
"I'm sorry to place this burden on you Mr. Wuggy," Alexander continued with an apologetic smile while Simon's ear twitched. "Also, I'm sure Yoko knows this already, but the ring has been damaged. Whatever it is that Mr. Cruz has done... well... I'll pray for the man, that's all I can do now."