Castlevania: Aria of the Ascending Soul
Written By: Lady Lunar Phoenix
Beta By: Lady Lunar Phoenix
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With evening approaching the castle, the transition to night time had begun. Shadows grew in length along the ground, the sky was exploding into evening colors, and, if one were a vampire, birds were just starting to return to their nests. Peace was starting to be recognized by nature, allowing for the animals to return. Granted the ground was a mess of fallen leaves or zigzagged cracks that came from the sudden return.
But it was settling back to normal, and theoretically the castle would fix things around its foundation on its own. What little breeze was around was gently stroking the still hanging leaves, given the world some sound of life. While the group made their way back to the castle, with a peculiar honor guard positioning at work. With Julius at the front, both Alexis and Yoko roughly southwest and southeast of him, Alucard in the back and Soma in the center.
Rising up before them, up the long path they had walked, was the Castle, the gates slowly opening as they approached. The bridge lowering slowly, tooth by tooth of the mighty wooden gears that rested on either side. So well timed that no one really had to stop and Julius never broke his pace as he walked over the bridge that many of his ancestors had walked over.
Raw malicious power, the thing the castle had always exuded was still there, he could feel that in the back of his mind. Yet it called to mind an overly vicious pet; he wasn't welcomed, only its masters were and those two were in the back. Also in the back were only two pairs of feet following him, where there should have been three...
Only Alucard had said nothing, and Julius forced himself to trust that Soma was not forcing Alucard into doing something he didn't want to do. So instead the hunter eyed the walls the castle, trying to find any clue of what might have rebuffed Alucards' earlier attempt at entry. With night coming there was some concern about what might 'come alive' with the darkness.
"Its been a long time, hasn't it?" Soma asked, his eyes taking in the castle for the first time with complete knowledge of what it was. Who it belonged to, and the long, long history it held. "This is where your mother found me. I had been content to live out my unlife raging against God in a coffin never to be disturbed. Yet somehow I was attracting all manners of beings, so I set up the castle more as a formality."
He watched the sky over head shift from soft blues to reds and all the shades in between. Unable to watch after he became a vampire, there was something about seeing it again over the castle. Knowing he was home. "I never thanked you for this," he gestured with his sword hand down at his body bringing it up to draw attention to his being. "I know this was not your intention, but thank you. Accidental as this was, I... I'm happy this way, maybe its hard to understand, but I needed this chance to see life and myself from a different perspective."
"Change is hard, and it can't be forced onto another person, it has to be done by the individual. It took me 200 years plus the humans killing your mother to shift my hatred from God to humanity. It took another rough 200 years for you to give me a reason to try to stop..." Soma turned his head so he could see Alucard over his shoulder. Watching as his stoic dhampire son stood stone faced and silent. "I couldn't leave the castle after your visit. It was hard given how I looked, far too recognizable to just go out for a stroll."
"I can now, and honestly its been a real treat, though I'm afraid that I might have cost you the ability to enjoy the world. What with the heightened Dhampire senses, the 'my father is a mass murderer bar none', the typical 'my father embarrasses me...'..."
"Can we just go?" Alucard finally snapped, the emotions that he normally had an easier time suppressing were starting to gnaw at the back of his mind.
"Afraid that your human friends are going to ease drop? Well, Yoko might blab but..." Soma casually shrugged as he looked back up at the castle. "The world looks different from the outside," he noted before resuming his walk to join the other hunters at the front doors of the castle.
Alucard stood observing Soma's posture and movement, the coat obscuring some of it, but Soma wasn't moving his left hand much anymore. It was staying tucked into the pocket of his coat and only slightly moving. While the castle acquiescence to the hunters' presence apparently now that its Lord had returned as well. 'Though why it would deny me is still a question I want answers to.'
Wounded though he was at the castle rejecting him earlier, Alucard glanced up to check the front 'face' of the castle. Noting the soft bloom of lights in the windows signaling that fires were being lit in fireplaces or candles. Once night fully bloomed if the Castle was going to show itself the way it was before his mothers' death.
''Change comes from within' may, in fact be true, but 'have' you changed?' Alucard pondered as he resumed walking after the group. Thanks to the sudden and outright violent return of the castle any natural signs of change were in hiding or dead. Now that a day had passed, despite the wind and open air, Alucard could smell the corpses of wildlife struck dead.
Weighed down by Soma's words that 'Alucard gave him a reason' it stood to reason to ask. 'What else did I cause? I was already in the Far East when you were summoned again, the third time was when you were entrapped within the Master chambers. When the Morris' had to deal with you,' the gnawing sensation in the back of his mind grew.
As guilt and shame burned its way along his nerves, and raised a bile along the back of his throat. It was an easy dot to connect between two points, if he hadn't left the Demon Castle Wars would not have happened. It was one thing to murder his father over and over again for the 'sake of the world'. It was a completely different matter if 'he' was the reason millions died.
'Not right now, deal with the castle, then when I have some time to myself...' he ordered as he forced his emotions back. Shoved back into that small room where he kept the emotions the world didn't need from him.
"You're plotting!" Yoko's voice sang out of the evening gloom.
"I'm thinking 'Arcade hall' and maybe a Karaoke room... You know, instead of letting the Castle just decide what it wants..." Soma's voice rang out in answer, calm, almost flippantly playful.
"Oh yeah, no more harem halls? Or majority of monsters being female and in states of nude?" She answered with the cheeky grin clear in her voice.
"You know... I didn't need to see that amid all the other demonic activity. But I can understand the castle's logic, I mean, I'm young, guys my age would appreciate such set ups..."
'I think murdering father as he is right now would be the least guilt inducing chance I'd ever get,' Alucard thought sourly. Even if in the back of his mind he knew different.
Julius cleared his voice before giving a sigh, "Soma is there anything you can sense from the Castle that might help us."
"Thanks for ruining the fun," Soma answered with a shrug, "but yes... Something is up with the Castle. Oh and I'm off the hook, because apparently there's a 'reason' why Alucard couldn't enter earlier!"
"Well don't leave us in suspense," Alexis called out, her tone the closest to 'normal' since she had been bum rushed with her patron lord, his father and the castle.
Soma's answer though, was to turn and check on Alucard, the slightest tilt of his hair. A silent signal for Alucard to hurry up and join them, before he quickened his own steps towards the other hunters at the front of the castle.
No bats flew over head with the approaching night, there was no garden really to look at in the evening. But now on his second trip to the castle Alucard 'could' see there had been some adjustments since his first arrival. One being the now established walkway, with the stone finish, there were pedestals waiting for statues further out. With a few lanterns that were starting to glow into life hanging on either side of the large wooden doors.
Soma had walked up to the door, his hand was placed against it though he wasn't opening it at the moment. While the other three hunters waited, with remarkable, patience for the Dark Lord to speak.
"It seems Fortners cult won the power struggle, Grahams' lust for power has made them no better than demonic beasts. Fortners' has begun to capitalize on it, they have wits about them and have adjusted to various branches." Soma's eyes had closed, hidden by the darkness they couldn't see how his eyes moved as though reading text.
So instead they turned to focus up at the castle, pondering just what these 'branches' were turning into.
"Both the castle and I are fine with them cannibalizing each other, that's not really the problem. Its everyone else, while the castle isn't really concerned with them, there's a lot more humans than I was prepared for." Soma reported opening his eyes to stare at the oak door before him. In his mind the castle had shown him little more than what humans might consider heat signatures. Of course when one was as old as Dracula was, they knew better, skeletons, zombies, there were a 'lot' of beings that didn't produce heat.
It wasn't as simple as pulling up a map as one would in a video game, the castle just didn't process information like that. At the very most it was seemingly better to describe as being marked with a plethora of 'servant', 'potential servant', and 'prey' with the occasional 'hunter'. 'Going to have to work on that,' he thought as the images shrank as he tried to study the floors of the castle.
There were also... spirit hunters?
"We can't do this alone, even if I order the castle, the civilian count exceeds the numbers that could have come locally. I think the castle was pulling 'globally' instead," Soma finally announced as he turned to look at the group.
Silence greeted his final prognosis with stunned disbelief, the group was mostly visible to his more vampiric gaze. With the sun gone from the sky the more Soma shifted, unbidden, back into his vampire state. It illuminated his view, revealing the group better than when he was human. So he could see the pure disbelief and horror on Yoko and Alexis' faces. When bookending Julius who was frowning, as expected, with his gaze gone inward.
Planning.
With Alucard no better, despite his dhampire nature making him a little harder to read due to the lack of light.
But it was what it was. "Are the humans safe?" Julius finally asked, his gruff voice low and troubled.
"No, they are not prisoners and as such have free run of the place. Which you can understand the immediate problem, the servants can not deal with Grahams' little cultists turned monsters 'and' look after the civilians. While Fortners' is not wont for test subjects now," Soma answered without preamble.
"But can't you, I don't know, lock them up until we get the monsters deal with? Or warp them back out?" Yoko asked, turning her gaze up to the castle in quiet horror.
"Not from here, and even if I get to the master chamber I can only warp small groups at 'best' and I don't know for how long," Soma explained.
He let the words hang, unwilling to go further to explain his growing fatigue. The castle was functioning without the near limitless power of Chaos. Soma wasn't manipulating the weather to keep the sun at bay so by the time they made it to the Master chambers. Who knew? It might be dawn and Soma's power would decrease what with that ring burning his life away.
Hell, doing this could very well kill Soma if he pushed it.
"Would you allow me to perform the task?"
The question came out of nowhere, with a voice that no one, even Soma really expected.
Alucard, without inflection to his voice, waited patiently for an answer, while his black clothes and hair, coupled with his pale skin left him almost an echo of a long lost past. But his question earned a slight nod from Soma. He even looked slightly pleased by the question.
"Yes, I can grant you that, though I'm not sure if you can command the castle when you strive to keep your power to its bare minimal. You may have to release the final seal, though I understand your displeasure at the thought." Soma confessed while he saw Alexis looking down thoughtfully.
"The towers are down and I doubt the castle has a landline. So if we're to reach my brother or anyone in the other hunter clans, I can take a nap, I could inform them of what is going on through him." She explained thoughtfully, "however; that may not be enough, even if they flew directly here, we're talking possible days to arrive. If Drac-Soma can open a portal for them alone, no matter how brief..." She began holding her hands out as though weighing the situation.
"It still leaves the civilians in the castle in question. The castle has a corrupting effect on humans normally, but with the Chaos gone. Is the corruption still a problem? Because that's the most important part of this whole situation right now," Julius asked, directing his question towards Soma. "Other things like 'why would the castle even kidnap them' can wait until we can confirm their safety."
This was far too new territory for the clans to deal with really. With the return of the castle it was only a question of 'how long' until the military's mobilized for a strike against the castle. A castle that was working with decreased power, a non confrontational Dracula, with civilians trapped within along with two cults.
"Can you fathom out why the castle brought civilians within its walls?" Alucard asked turning his gaze up to the building. From far above he could almost see a ghost that called to mind Sophia, but he couldn't confirm. 'Probably trying to figure out how to get anything done for the humans. Given being ghosts', he thought with indifference.
"I was a little upset, I can assume that it was the equivalent of giving a woman a tub of ice cream, a stack of movies and a sleep over." Soma replied flippantly with a roll of the shoulders.
"As a woman, let me just say, you're right," Yoko answered her tone building up to that of an offended woman only to swap to cheerful. 'Hell, given how Alucard was trussed up, it wouldn't have killed him. Though the insult of doing such a thing was clearly there...' "But if the castle is not being fueled by Chaos and not a threat... can't the servants just... treat them as guests?"
"Yoko its the Castle of Dracula," Alexis began only to have Soma cut her off.
"Of course it can, it could before when it was whole I just stopped willing for that to happen," Soma answered easily, leaning back against the stone archway that housed the castle doors.
"Though I imagine zombie servants can be a bit... much to deal with," Julius noted as he stared up at the castle with a small frown. "We find a room safe enough for Alexis to take her nap, once she's sent out the message we can proceed."
"While we wait for her to sleep, we can at least try to manage the floor we're on," Yoko agreed with a slight nod.
"That's a wonderful plan so if you could just en-" Annette began as she finally thrust her head through the door, missing Soma's own head by inches. Her sudden manifestation sent Soma diving forward and the three other human hunters jumping back in alarm. "-ter? Did I do something wrong?"
She slowly floated out the door looking at the hunters in growing concern, deciding to give her focus to Alucard. Since the Dhampire looked utterly unaffected by her sudden appearance and her husband and sister thought highly of the man.
"And you would be my lady?" Alucard asked, taking in the style of dress she wore. If he recalled much about dress styles and time periods he wanted to say she was from about Richter's point of time.
"Annette Belmont, the lady wife of Richter Belmont," she answered giving a small curtsy to the prince.
"Annette Belmont?!" Julius blurted out in shocked disbelief. His mind instantly going over the family history and coming up blank on a time when a spouse to a hunter was just 'living in the castle' as a ghost.
'Oh please, oh please, oh please don't tell Julius what I did to your husband or the other Belmonts,' Yoko thought in near naked panic.
"Um, yes, the castle seemed to do a bit of 'soul plucking' for lack of better word," Annette explained gently. 'Why does Yoko look so panicked? Is something wrong?'