A Song of Ice, Fire & the Dead
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Chapter 40: He's not the Messiah
Gears and pistons moved like some gigantic clock, perpetually moving, powering whatever it was that lay beneath the catacombs of Gresit. Saeko had to glance down into the chasm below that almost threatened to suck her in just by looking at it. The samurai had to wonder just how deep and vast this must be.
The thought was quickly put aside as a massive piston slammed near the group, with another rapidly following it. Breaking into a run, the group lost their collective footing and slid and tumbled down to another level. This level had some platforms, giant gears and steel beams. No-one had the time to examine their surroundings as an ominous cracking sound was heard and they looked to see the platform they stood on threatened to break away from its moorings.
Sypha quickly acted by using her magic to boost herself onto one of the giant rotating gears. Trevor, Aegon and Saeko did a running dash and leapt onto another rotating gear. Traversing down the gears, the four dropped onto the shaft connecting two giant metal pieces. Coming to the centre, Aegon spotted another beam that was a great distance between them.
"Think any of us can make that jump?" the swordsman asked, looking at his friends.
"Doubtful," Trevor stated bluntly as he unfurled Vampire Killer. Taking aim and twirling his whip, Trevor lashed out the braided leather cord. Luckily, the whip's end wrapped around the far-end steel beam. Trevor then pulled it taut and ushered the others to climb across it. Sypha went first, going hand over hand. Trevor held on tightly to the handle of his whip with Aegon and Saeko helping to ease the stress of the weight on the Belmont scion's grip.
Once Sypha made it across the chasm and hauled herself up onto the beam, Trevor looked at Aegon and Saeko. "You two go across next," he told them.
"Are you sure?" Saeko asked him and Trevor nodded in response. "Alright, then." Taking out her katana and keeping in its scabbard, Saeko gripped her weapon, hooking it around the whip's cord and with a push, she ziplined across the gap.
"Clever girl," Trevor grunted out in approval as he did his level best to keep his grip firm.
"That she is," Aegon agreed as he brought out his axe and emulated his lover, zipping across the void and joining Saeko and Sypha on the other side. Now all that was left was for Trevor to make his way across. Trevor seated himself on the edge of the platform and wrapped his whip around his arm for good measure.
"You sure about this, Belmont?" Aegon hollered at him.
"I'll be fine!" Trevor shouted as he tried to not let his nerves show before pushing himself off the edge and swung downwards and smacked into a lower beam than the one his companions were on.
"Belmont! Are you alright?" Sypha called out to him. Trevor looked up to respond to the Speaker magician's query when a crackling, crunching noise could be heard and everyone realised that the structure was coming apart.
"Oh, for God's sake!"
Hastily, Trevor started to climb up his whip. Aegon and Saeko pulled on the other end to allow Trevor to climb up faster. And at the very moment Trevor joined them on the beam, enormous gears and cogs began to fall down from high up, smashing into the structure. Holding on for dear life, the four adventurers plummeted into the darkness below.
The beam they clung to hit the ground, but the backlash from the fall threw them all off and into a much deeper home in the ground. They all screamed in panic before hitting another floor, this time the fall knocking them out.
They all came to, they were all groaning in pain, a sign that they were alive, albeit more than a little battered and bruised.
"Are we dead?" Aegon asked through his groan of pain.
"No… but I'm wishing I was," Trevor wheezed as he got to his feet and helped everyone else to stand. After brushing themselves off, they all noticed the room they were standing in. It was an elongated hall or chamber, with a rich looking red carpet with an intricate gold pattern on the trim. The lightbulbs that illuminated the room gave off a white light rather than the electric blue. At the far end of the hall, there appeared to be an altar of some kind, but upon closer inspection when walking up to it, it was a coffin of some kind with two large glass cylinders of an unidentifiable red liquid inside them hooked up to the coffin itself.
Walking over the carpet, Trevor's foot errantly stepped on something which created a loud clicking sound that meant something had been triggered.
Upon seeing everyone glaring at him accusingly, Trevor said in his defence, "I didn't do that." Sypha and Aegon looked at the man like he was the stupidest person imaginable. Saeko however was more focussed on the coffin which had steam coming from it.
Everyone watched with bated breath as the top of the coffin slid off by itself before falling onto the metal floor with a thud that echoed throughout the hall. And floating out from within was a man.
He was shirtless with pale skin and on his torso there was a elongated scar from hip to shoulder diagonally. He wore only a pair of black trousers, black boots and a leather belt slung over his hips. After floating upright, the man lowered his head, his mane of pale platinum blonde hair, so pale, Aegon thought the man may be of Valyrian descent, to drape over his face, obscuring it from view.
"Why are you here?" the mysterious man asked them.
"The story!" Sypha crowed in happiness. "The Messiah sleeps under Gresit! The man who will save us from Dracula!" she declared in relief and triumph.
The stranger shifted his head to where Aegon and Saeko stood. "And you two?" he asked them plainly.
"We're in-between places you might say; just looking for a way back home," Aegon said guardedly.
"…And you?" the mystery man asked Trevor. "Are you in search for a mythical saviour?" he questioned.
"I fell down a hole," Trevor stated bluntly.
"Dracula is aboard in the land. He has an army of monsters. He's determined to wipe out all human life where he finds it!" Sypha quickly said to whom she believed to the saviour.
The floating man frowned a little at her words and asked, "Is that what you believe?"
"Of Dracula unleashing an army of the night on Wallachia?" Saeko asked. "If you'd see the situation outside like we have, then you'll know it's a fact," she stated.
"I agree with her," Trevor said in support to Saeko's words. "There's no belief involved. But that's not what you're asking us," he added.
"Correct," replied the mysterious stranger in confirmation.
"You're asking if I believe you're some sleeping messiah who will save us all. And I don't."
"Belmont!" Sypha chided him, shocked at his rudeness.
Sypha seem ecstatic to finally find her saviour, whereas Trevor didn't think that whomever this stranger may be was not the messiah but something else entirely. This made Aegon and Saeko more cautious than anything else.
"I know what you are," Trevor then said to the stranger.
The stranger smiled at this and said, "And what am I?"
"You're a vampire."
The man raised his head and opened his eyes to reveal they were nearly the same colour as his hair. He parted the lips of his mouth to reveal longer than average canine teeth that were almost needle-like in shape.
"So, this is a vampire," Aegon remarked in fear and wonder, never having seen one before.
Trevor gritted his teeth together, glaring at what was now identified as a vampire. "Now, I have to ask myself, have we come here to wake up the man who'll kill Dracula, or did we come down here to wake Dracula himself?"
This set Saeko on edge and she reflexsively put a hand to her sword, ready to draw it out. Back home, there were many stories about the myth of Count Dracula and many were varied, but a constant was that he was a vampire; a blood drinking fiend who fed on the innocent.
Floating down so that his feet were just barely touching the carpet, the vampire spoke. "Dracula. You call me… Dracula."
"I'll call you anything you like if you're gonna show your teeth to me," came Trevor's flippant response.
'Dracula' gestured to Sypha, saying, "She called you Belmont. House of Belmont?"
"What does it mean to you?" Aegon asked 'Dracula'.
Trevor raised a hand to hush him as he introduced himself. "Trevor Belmont. Last son of the House of Belmont."
"The Belmonts fought the creatures of the night, did they not? For generations," 'Dracula' pointed out.
"Say what you mean," Trevor replied, stepping towards the vampire.
"The Belmonts killed vampires," came the blunt response.
"And you have some sort of grudge against Trevor's family? Is that it?" Aegon asked.
The vampire looked at Aegon who stared back unafraid. "Who said I have a grudge to carry?" the vampire said in response to Aegon's question.
"Plenty of vampires would hold a grudge against those who make it their business to hunt vampires and other creatures of the night," Trevor said nonchalantly. "Until the good people decided they didn't want my family around anymore, that is," he added as an afterthought.
"And now Dracula is carrying out an execution of the human race. Do you care, Belmont?" the vampire then asked.
Trevor was silent, obviously caught off guard by the question. "Honestly, I didn't care at first," he replied. He then looked at the floating vampire. "But now? Yes, it's time to out an end to it!"
Sypha smiled at Trevor's statement with Aegon and Saeko nodding in approval. Despite not caring for the safety of others at first, it appeared that Trevor had changed his tune.
"Do you think you can?" came the vampire's next line of questioning.
"What I think is…" Trevor put a hand to his whip. "I'm going to have to kill you," he said.
This proclamation then alarmed everyone with Sypha speaking out desperately. "Belmont, no! He's the one we've been waiting for!"
"No, he's not, Sypha," Trevor quickly told her. "He's a vampire, and he's not been waiting for hundreds of years. Have you?" he accused the vampire who glared at him.
"I don't like your tone, Belmont," it said in a frosty voice.
"I have to agree with Trevor on this one," Saeko said speaking up. "From what I've been able to gather, everything outside of this room is old while this room here is relatively new and refurbished and well maintained. If whomever is before is the Sleeping Soldier, then this room would be as old as everything else outside of it."
"An impressive deduction," the vampire remarked in dry approval.
"Well go on then, vampire. Tell us; how long have you been waiting down here?" Trevor asked.
The vampire looked at Sypha and asked, "What is the year of your lord?"
"1476."
"…Perhaps a year, then."
"There we go. And on top of that, what kind of Messiah creates deathtraps to make sure his nap doesn't go interrupted?" Trevor stated.
"That does make sense," Aegon said with a nod of his head as he remembered the Stone-eye Cyclops earlier in the day.
"Those defences were not for you," the vampire informed them all.
"You could've told your defences that," Trevor said sarcastically.
"They're machines. Nothing more," dismissed the vampire. "They were not intended to protect me from you. And you haven't answered my question from earlier; do you care?"
"I care about carrying on my family's work. I care about saving human lives," Trevor answered. "Now, am I going to have to kill you?" he asked.
"Do you think you can?" the vampire asked challengingly. "If you're really a Belmont and not some runt running around with a family crest, you might be able to." Twitching the fingers of his right, the vampire summoned a silver sword that had an almost comically long thin blade, shooting out of the coffin and the vampire caught it effortlessly by the hilt. "Let's find out!" the vampire then stated.
"Belmont, you can't do this!" Sypha pleaded.
Trevor did not relent as he unfurled his whip. "Tell it to your floating vampire Jesus here!" he told the Speaker.
"You've nothing but insults, have you?" the vampire asked in annoyed voice. "A tired little –" it tried to say when a sudden cracking sound was heard as Trevor's whip snapped its end into the vampire's torso. The vampire was flung back several feet, landing in a crouching position. Clutching the wound on its chest, the vampire looked up at Trevor and hissed balefully, angered that the hunter had drawn first blood.
Flexing his whip, Trevor began to twirl the leather cord about for another attack while saying to the vampire, "Stone the fuck up."
The vampire avoided the first attack then began to parry the next strikes with his sword.
"You can't do this, Belmont!" Sypha shouted desperately, trying to make Trevor see that this vampire was their supposed saviour.
"He's not the messiah!" Trevor rebuked her, not taking his attention off the vampire for a moment. "Dracula's castle can appear anywhere, Sypha. And this is what it looks like on the inside!" he further added.
The vampire kept parrying or dodging the mid-range strikes and asked his human opponent, "And you know what Dracula looks like?"
This gave Saeko pause for thought. Dracula was most often depicted in various forms of media as having dark hair with many film actors portraying over the years. It would be hard to tell what Dracula actually looked like.
Trevor kept up his manoeuvres as he responded to the vampire's question. "Nobody knows what Dracula looks like. Everyone who does is dead and gone!" Trevor panted as he felt his arms begin to tire, but he dared not let up as he did not want to get within short range of the vampire he was fighting. "You've got fangs! And you sleep in a coffin! That's about all I need to know!"
The vampire narrowly avoided the next strike aimed his face and landed near the altar. Trevor quickly hurled a knife at the creature who smoothly leapt up into the air to avoid the projectile. Trevor smirked as he used his thumb to bend the trajectory of his whip. The tip of the cord connected with the mid-air vampire with a thumping crack. The vampire was thrown across the room, smashing into a pillar hard.
"Nice hit!" Aegon complimented Trevor.
"You ain't seen nothing yet!" Trevor lashed his whip at the vampire who used his sword to block it this time. The whip wrapped around the blade of the vampire's sword a few times. Trevor then tried to wrench the sword from the vampire's hand with his whip. But he underestimated the vampire's strength as said vampire pulled back hard.
As a result, Trevor was nearly thrown off his feet, but he relinquished his hold on his whip. Hitting the ground at a run, Trevor drew his shortsword, hoping to use the smaller size of his weapon to his advantage against the vampire's much longer sword.
Seeing the monster hunter coming towards him, the vampire flicked his sword and discarded the whip wrapped around his blade. Once close enough, the vampire parried Trevor's series of strikes. He then jumped back onto the altar.
Trevor gave chase immediately, but in a show of superhuman speed, vampire disappeared in blurry red after-images of itself. Trevor looked around to see where the creature had disappeared to, but quickly spun around to block an attack from the vampire's own sword. Trevor successfully blocked it, but the force of the vampire's strike knocked him backwards.
Aegon observed the fight between Trevor and his vampiric foe. His mind began to critique the things he was seeing.
Trevor had the advantage of speed, but his opponent was able to keep him at a distance with sword. Physically, the vampire was many times stronger than Belmont was, had superior reflexes and as good if not better speed. Trevor, an admittedly out of practice, but still conditioned adult male human was still able to put up quite a fight and had even landed a couple of hits on his opponent.
Despite his efforts, Trevor was beginning to lose the bout against his vampiric foe. Drawing his sword, Aegon moved in, ignoring Sypha's cries to stop. Moving quickly, Aegon blocked the vampire's sword with his own, preventing the silvery blade from striking at Trevor's side.
Bracing himself, Aegon did his best to keep the vampire's strength from overwhelming him. The vampire was mildly surprised at this as the sound of razor sharp edges grated against each other. Looking at the blade of Blackfyre with a curious gaze, the vampire spoke his observation.
"Your sword was forged with magic," it remarked in interest. "It's unlike any other sword I've seen," it then said.
"A family heirloom, you could say," Aegon said in response to the vampire's remarks as he pushed the vampire away with a kick.
The vampire stepped back smoothly, looking at Aegon curiously. "This isn't your fight, boy," it told him. "My quarrel is with Belmont," it reminded him.
"Yeah, well, seems Trevor was a little outmatched," Aegon replied airily. "You being a big bad vampire makes things a little unfair on Trevor. I thought I'd even the odds a little," he said with a grin.
Trevor felt himself grinning at Aegon's words. He was starting to like this kid more and more; not afraid to fight and spit out the odd one-liner. Add to the fact that the kid had bagged a total hottie like Saeko who was a badass herself, Trevor felt almost stupidly envious of Aegon.
"You're a bit more respectful than Belmont it appears," the vampire said dryly before disappearing in another blurry red streak. Aegon ducked his head in time to narrowly avoid a thrust from the vampire's sword. Slapping aside the vampire's blade with his own, Aegon and Trevor then began to work on hammering away at the vampire's defences. The vampire skillfully blocked and parried the two warriors' attacks, but they were pushing him back, keeping him on the defensive.
Then in a sudden burst of power, the vampire forced the two fighters apart. Aegon was thrown back near Sypha and Saeko. Trevor locked swords with the vampire; the pair of them were almost flush against each other with the latter slowly almost lazily beginning to over overpower his foe.
Trevor suddenly slammed his knee into the vampire's pelvic region. This barely phased the vampire who said blandly in response, "Please. This isn't a bar fight. Have some class." Trevor then headbutted the vampire in the face which had some effect. The vampire staggered a second which Trevor capitalised on by tackling it. The vampire instinctively thrust a palm out, shoving Trevor forcefully off it. Trevor skidded onto his back and barely got up in time to block his opponent's strikes.
Sparks flew as the two blades collided with one another. Trevor mustered all his reserves of strength to force the vampire away and tried to cut him. The vampire however chose not to attack Trevor himself, but rather, his weapon of choice.
With powerful blows from each other, Trevor's sword was broken at the ricasso, but blood stained the broken edge of it. And the vampire now had a wound on its chest, crossing across his scar in an opposite diagonal angle, creating an X-shape as a result.
The vampire bared its teeth in anger, clearly annoyed. With a swift punch to the face, Trevor was sent flying back onto some steps.
Dropping its sword for the moment, the vampire then pinned Belmont to the steps, forcing his head back to expose his throat.
Hissing softly, the vampire asked, "Do you have a last god to pray to, Belmont?"
Trevor gave a defiant smile and replied, "Yes… Dear God, please don't let the vampire's guts ruin my last good tunic."
"…What?" The vampire gave a hiss of pain and looked down to see that Trevor had stabbed his broken blade dangerous near where its heart was.
"And don't the bastard's ashes give me something," Trevor also said as he dug his blade deeper into the vampire's body.
The vampire sneered at this when he felt something sharp kiss his throat and he looked out the corner of his eye to see Saeko with her sword drawn and the edge held to its throat.
"Back. Off," the samurai warned, her voice deadly calm, his steel blue eyes narrowed dangerously.
"I can still your friend's throat out," the vampire warned her.
"And I'll cut your head in response," the samurai replied.
"And it won't stop me from staking you," Trevor told the vampire.
The vampire focussed its attention on Saeko and said to her, "I'll still kill him before you."
"And you won't live long enough to gloat about it," Saeko said evenly.
"Neither of you care to lose your lives?" the vampire asked in mild confusion.
"I don't know about the lass, but for me, I don't," Trevor said to it. "Killing you was the point. Living through it was just a luxury," he declared.
Sypha quickly approached, a ball of flame appearing between her pinkie and index fingers. "Enough of this! I will incinerate you before your fangs touch him or even skewer the girl with your hand!" she threatened.
"I thought I was your legendary saviour," the vampire deadpanned dryly.
"So did I," Sypha replied. "But they save my life. You didn't," she said.
The vampire looked at her for a moment before saying, "You're a Speaker-magician." It said the words as an observation rather than a question.
"Yes. And their goal is mine; to stand up for the people."
The vampire smiled at this and gave a snort of amusement. "Good… Very good," it said before releasing its hold on Trevor, the wounds it sustained healing instantly. "A vampire, a hunter, a scholar and two warriors. You four will do nicely."
"What does that even mean?" Aegon asked stepping to stand beside Saeko who had sheathed her sword.
"I am Adrian Tepes," the vampire finally introduced himself. "Known to Wallachians as Alucard." He then looked at Trevor intently. "Son of Vlad Dracula Tepes."
"Dracula had a son?" Saeko asked in surprise. She recalled the name Alucard from back home; it was Dracula spelt backwards and Dracula, depending on which media he appeared in, used the name as an alias of sorts. "Isn't Alucard Dracula spelled backwards?" she asked the vampire.
"Pretty lazy if you ask me," Trevor grunted as he got to his feet.
"It matters not," Adrian or rather Alucard said. "I've been asleep here beneath Gresit for over a year, to heal the wounds dealt to me by my father, when I attempted to stop his plans for enacting genocide on the human race with his demon army," he explained.
"Then you are the Sleeping Soldier," Sypha observed as she extinguished her fire spell.
"I'm aware of the stories," Alucard said blandly. "Though I can neither confirm nor deny them," he quickly added before looking at Sypha intently. "I'm also aware that the Speaker tribes consider this story to be information from the future. Would I be correct in guessing you know the whole story perhaps?" he asked.
"Y-yes," Sypha said with an embarrassed look on her face.
"The whole story? What is the whole story?" Aegon asked in confusion.
"I'd like to know that too," Trevor chimed in with an annoyed look in his eyes.
Looking at Trevor, Aegon and Saeko, Sypha told them next part of the story. "The Sleeping Soldier will be met by four: a Hunter, A Scholar and two Warriors from another world."
The 'Hunter' and the two 'Warriors' all blinked in surprise at this revelation.
"No-one told me that," Trevor muttered.
"Is this story substantiated anywhere? Anything on paper?" Aegon asked.
"Why do you think my grandfather tried everything to make you stay?" Sypha then asked them.
Trevor heaved out a sigh and muttered, "This is why I hate Speakers." The displeasure in his voice was evident.
Alucard was in the process of clothing himself with some clothes in his coffin. A white shirt and a long black coat with gold trims on it. Pulling out the scabbard of his sword, the Son of Dracula, slipped the sheath into the loops of his belt as his sword floated through the air to sheathe itself int the scabbard.
"The five of us," he said softly. "The five of us must bring an end to Dracula's war on Wallachia, on humanity," he stated determinedly looking at everyone else.
"Why?" Trevor asked suspiciously as he gathered up his whip and coiled the cord up to hang it on his belt. "Why do this? Why help us?"
"Because it's what my mother would've wanted," Alucard replied, his tone becoming more forlorn. "After all, we're slaves to our family's wishes in the end," he said with a touch of bitterness.
Aegon looked at Alucard in surprise, finding resonance in his words. In a strange way, he could relate to the idea of being a slave to familial wishes; the Iron Throne awaited him at the end of his journey and the responsibilities that would come with it.
"You'll help us kills Dracula, your father, to save Wallachia?" Trevor inquired. He was obviously still on guard around the Son of Dracula.
Adrian looked at Trevor and nodded in confirmation. "Dracula, my father, has to die. The five of us… we can destroy him!" he declared.
TO BE CONTINUED…
A/N: There! Chapter 40 is done and dusted! I hope you all enjoyed it, because this is just the beginning. And after this arc is finished, we'll see Aegon and Saeko travel to another world and speaking of, the poll results show DC Comics and Marvel Comics tied for first place. So, I may have to make an executive decision of which of them I want to send Aegon and Saeko to and for that matter, what continuity it will be. Of course, some of you may want to see Aegon and Saeko in either DCeased or Marvel Zombies, but I don't really know too much about either of those continuities to make a decision, but I can still do some research on them and decide whether I want to use.
In all likelihood, I may set up another voting poll of what DC or Marvel continuity I want to send Aegon and Saeko to next, but we'll see after the number of voters for the poll I have currently get up to fifteen or more voters.
And that's about all I have at this minutes, so I'll leave this here and see you all next time.
Be kind to one another,
Angry lil' elf.