Blood sprayed from the human's neck as Carrie slashed its throat. The man gurgled as fluid filled his lungs and he struggled to breath against the long pike impaling his stomach. He should have been grateful for a quick end to his otherwise arduous suffering but the instinct to live was hard to resist, even at the end.
Carrie pumped magic through her body to quicken her speed and she raced about the foggy landscape, using her mystic eyes to detect and kill any of the impaled who remained alive. She didn't need to kill all of them to undo the shroud clouding her vision, but it was still a lot of work for one person. Getting the others involved wasn't an option for her.
She suddenly stopped as a dark figure halted her path. "What do you want Alucard?" Carrie said.
"You're trying to kill them before Julius notices aren't you?" Alucard said.
"What I do isn't any of your business" Carrie said.
"We are in a war aren't we? So it'd say what you do absolutely is my business" Alucard said. "And I think you know that too. You're just proving me right"
Carrie felt her chest tighten as the half-breed spoke. She began tracking the rhythm of her breaths and breathing in sequence to keep her stress levels down. When she felt she collected herself she said, "They're using the bodies to mask my vision. If I'm blind we can't track their movements"
"There's no one here Carrie. There never was. What movements are you waiting to see?" Alucard said, stepping closer. "Did you think that movements beyond the castle walls would be relevant once we are inside? We'll be constantly fighting at our flank once we are in there. Dracula has no reason to fight us out here where he stands at a disadvantage"
"You can't know that for sure" Carrie said.
"I can, because it's impacting your behavior" Alucard said. "Or did you think he was trying to hurt the feelings of a few hundred human soldiers? Bah, he doesn't care about them"
Carrie turned back to the castle. The main gate laid just a few hundred feet away, clear of monsters or anything obstructing the path. Not even a bone pillar lay on the walls.
"We've arrived" Carrie said. "I almost forgot to notice"
"Dracula will focus his primary forces on the four of us Carrie. Which is why I thought I'd take a detour down the catacombs" Alucard. "If you'd prefer to join me, I'd accept your request"
"Thanks" Carrie said. "But no thanks. I'm not leaving them alone"
"I didn't think you would" Alucard said. "But I wanted you to hear yourself say it"
Carrie stared in silence as he vanished into the foggy landscape. "Well dang" Carrie said, far too late to respond.
Julius heard a soft boom on the path ahead. To him it was like an audible confirmation that the spring on the trap had sprung. He held his whip at the ready.
A single figure emerged on the road ahead, but Julius quickly recognized it as belonging to Carrie Fernandez.
"The gates are opening. I think he's expecting you" Carrie said.
"Get behind me Carrie, and watch our flank" Julius ordered. He tried to ignore her awful attempt at humor.
"Hmph" Carrie pouted, but she did as he asked.
This wasn't the first time Julius had set foot on this wooden walkway. Last time he was accompanied by a lone vampire hunter like himself. Those were the days he first met Carrie, the days when they found her lying beneath the castle in a deep slumber. The castle was mostly empty then with only a handful of monsters scattered about its walls. This time would be different. No Belmont had ever faced Dracula at his full strength before. It was possible that they'd encounter creatures who escaped mention in the texts, or that Dracula's forces had acquired new attributes. Could they have overcome some of their weaknesses? Julius prayed not.
"FORWARD!" Julius shouted. He sprinted inside with over two hundred soldiers not far behind him.
The entryway was enormous and lined with pillars on either side. The stone columns towered above them but the dim lighting obscured the ceiling from their view. Julius remembered his first time inside the castle and feared what may be lurking on the ceiling.
"Caster's here now!" Julius ordered. Four mages rushed forward and shot beams of orange light towards each corner of the room. The ceiling was tall but it was bare. In fact the entire room was empty.
"Keep those lights bright and stay behind the others where it's safe" Julius said. He didn't like this, did they want him to move deeper into the castle?
"The walls are moving!" a soldier cried behind him.
"Build a perimeter and regroup!" Julius shouted. The floor around them burst with iridescent light as the soldiers threw holy water about them.
The gate behind them suddenly snapped shut.
"Curses" Julius said. "This is happening too fast." Look as he may, he couldn't see anything moving along the walls. Was this the barrier Carrie had mentioned earlier? If so he could ignore it. And there was a bigger concern. He reached to his coat and called on the hand radio.
"Olga, the gates shut behind us. You remember the back entrance yes? Meet us at the castle center." Julius said. "Jonathon, keep your forces behind us and cover us if we need to escape. I think I remember how to break the locks on that blasted door!"
He paused for a second awaiting their confirmation, but he heard nothing.
"Olga? Jonathon? Do either of you read this?" Julius said, but he could only hear static. "Jonathon? Do you copy? Olga? Do you copy?" Julius repeated. They're not dead. Please don't be dead.
"Alright then. Looks like it's just us" Julius said. "Here we come. You afraid vampires?"
"Not particularly, no" came a reply. "There is hesitation in your voice. Perhaps if you'd had more time to grow you'd be better at hiding it."
Julius searched around him but he couldn't hear where the voice was coming from. It was as though it was echoing directly in their ears, without a physical origin.
"You sound like you're trying to imitate a movie character" the voice said. "Let the adults handle this"
The lights went out. Julius heard a scream.
"Get the bloody lights back on!" Julius yelled. As he spoke four more orange lights crackled into the air. The entire army was surrounded by axe armors.
"FIRE!" Julius screamed. The axe armor crumbled to pieces as the soldiers open fired with blessed silver ammunition. Two dozen werewolves raced from behind the fallen pieces and attempted to leap over the flaming holy water surrounding them. "Bayonets Up" Julius said, and the werewolves fell onto pointed bayonets.
The floor shook as minotaur's raced towards them from the opposite end of the hall. Their bodies slammed to the ground as they were ripped to shreds by silver bullets, but one of the red beasts had come close enough to throw his axe their direction.
Carrie leapt forward and pulled a long staff from her compressed pouch. The staff was golden with a crested top and several soul gems decorating the inside. As it hummed to life, crystal formations spontaneously erupted from the ground. The axe slammed against them and bounced harmlessly to the floor.
The remaining minotaurs and werewolves drew back, as a flock of harpies, medusa heads, and dolls flew in from above. One of the dolls sparked with an electric shock that reacted with the crystal shields produced seconds before. They exploded, and Julius scarcely ducked in time to escape the shrapnel. Those behind him were not so fortunate.
"We can't stay bundled together here. But we can't face those creatures without cover" Julius said. He'd known that Carrie could produce crystals with Actriss's staff, but he'd never inquired about the extent of those powers. "Carrie" he shouted. "Can you change the landscape with those crystals to give us some cover?"
As she nodded, the entire cavern suddenly sparkled with color as crystals of varying size and shape sprouted from the walls, the columns, and the floor. Julius tossed several axes into the air and dove between a pair of crystalline structures to engage a pair of minotaurs.
"You're sure about this Olga?" the Bishop said, he was struggling to climb the rope extending over the walls of Dracula's castle.
"Shhhh, be quiet" Olga said. It was a stupid question to ask. She wasn't sure about anything she was doing, but doubting herself at this hour was the least productive thing she could do. Well, besides some other things. Okay, sure there were plenty of less productive ways to spend her time.
"Jonathon's forces are in position" Clovis said from the top of the wall. Olga pulled herself up over the wall with one last tug. It wasn't particularly difficult for her, although she would normally have used magic to speed up the process.
She pulled out Alucard's binoculars to check the exterior. Jonathon's army was heading eastward, just past the castle gate. They'd marched one full rotation around the castle by now, but it didn't look like any of Dracula's forces had taken notice. She hadn't encountered anything herself either. Alucard had already split off to venture alone. It was possible that he was trying to draw away some of the enemy attacks. If that were true, then Dracula would focus most of his remaining attention on Vampire Killer and Carrie.
Olga slipped the binoculars back into a pouch on her belt and unfolded the castle map she and Alucard had made months ago while scouting the castle. They couldn't create a complete version, but they had the general layout. At their westward position, the tower immediately before them would lead into the Chapel. The name was hypocrisy, as there was nothing holy about the place. It was a poor attempt at humor on the part of Dracula, to make mockery of God. But she had a bishop, and an entire army of priests on her side.
"Julius, Jonathon do you hear me?" Olga said over the radio. "I've got an idea."
She waited for a response. Hearing none, she repeated her callout.
"Jonathon are you there? Julius?" Olga said. But it returned with static. She turned to one of the priests next to her. "I need you to relay a message to Jonathon. Tell him to meet us on the Western side and prepare to enter. We're going to make a new door"
"You want me to go alone?" said the priest.
"Yes, If Dracula hasn't bothered with any of us yet a lone soldier has the highest chance of making it there. He likely won't notice you, or won't care if he does" Olga said. "Now go"
The man slid down the rope, falling much faster than it would take to climb back up.
"Clovis, keep an eye out for harpies, and winged beasts as we descend. They'd normally be crawling all over a place like this." Olga said. "The rest of you down with me, we are going to blow a hole right in the side of that tower. It'll lead us into Dracula's Chapel where we can…."
Her voice is suddenly cut off by an explosion at the adjacent tower. Stone flies outward from the walls as Olga and the other priests jump to the floor to avoid shrapnel. A deafening howl pierces the night leaving her petrified in place.
"Adramelech!" cries Clovis.
"Shit!" curses Olga, jumping to her feet. The monster was charging right for the wall. "Climb to the towers now!" Olga yells. She turns back towards the exterior and the hundred soldiers still scaling the wall. "Get down! Retreat! Run!" Olga cries.
A hand grabs at her scarlet tunic. "Now Belnades!" Clovis said. Olga runs to the edge of the walkway but she feels the ground giving out beneath her. She jumps, holding tight to Clovis's hand, and amplifies her leap with magical energy carrying them to the next tower. The walkway behind her crumbles apart. She tries to call out to her troops but loses sight of them behind mists of dust, stone and ash.
"He's ignoring us" Olga said. Adramelech was a powerful demon, standing six stories high and commanding a legion of demonic forces under the Dark Lord. His body was covered in green fur and had a head resembling a cross between a goat and a horse. He was normally locked away deep inside the castle as Dracula feared he might one day rebel against him. But even in chains he was a formidable opponent, released like this…
Olga shot beams of flame from her palms but they bounced harmlessly off the creature's fur. It didn't bother to turn around as it marched eastward with hundreds of skeleton knights rushing behind him. Olga's eyes danced around the grounds, but she couldn't see any trace of human survivors. Up atop the walls there were two groups of people separated from the hole in the wall. Perhaps four dozen priests and twenty from Clovis's squad. "That's it?" Olga said, in horror.
Olga grabbed Clovis's hand once more, and leapt from the tower to meet the Bishop.
"We can't stay separated like this, channel whatever mana you have with me now" Olga said. The mages in the group united and a sheet of ice sizzled beneath their feet, extending out across the broken wall. The soldiers on the other side looked about themselves for a moment before realizing this was their cue to run across.
"Pray for Jonathon and those that stand with him" Olga said. "It's all we can do for him now"
The air around him froze as the catoblepas exhaled. Julius leapt around its back and cracked its skull in two with his whip. A rock armor pounded into the ground around him as he struggled to regain his footing. He dove between its broad legs, breaking a vial of holy water beneath it.
Julius killed so many beasts he'd long lost count. The onslaught was endless, never had he heard of Dracula pouring so many forces into one room like this. They didn't leave him any chance to breath, let alone coordinate an attack with his troops. He'd lost track of where they were and tried to convince himself that he needed to trust that they were trained them well enough to handle themselves. But that was a lie. Dracula's forces must be trying to sever the head from the rest of the snake.
"Aaaarrrgh" Julius shouted as he released what mana he'd gathered inside his body. The air around him shattered like a vacuum, drawing nearby opponents near before exploding in a violent blue cross, killing all the monsters in his vicinity.
It was the only magical based attack he could summon, most magical affinity in the Belmont bloodline being diluted over generations. It'd take hours before he could use it again, but it bought him the needed time to gather a sense of where he was.
As he gathered the soldiers around him a loud crack suddenly came from the end of the hall.
"No, it's too early" Julius said, as his heart sank and the column behind him exploded.
Carrie finds herself immobilized by her own magic. She'd never summoned this many crystals and it was sucking away at her mana. Holding the landscape meant she had to stay put and gather what dark energy she could from her surroundings.
She'd claimed Actriss's staff not long after her initial conquest of the castle. Dracula had wanted her to become a vampire, but she refused and tried to abate him by familiarizing herself with the witch's powers. That's when she first learned about soul gems, and the ability to transfer the energy of life into objects. She harvested souls like a reaper to build Dracula's army for this plan. His full strength left him open, vulnerable, and exposed at the center. It seemed so contradictory that no previous vampire hunter had ever tried. Yet here she was, holding the landscape in place with a witch's staff, and armed with a dress covered in enough soul gems to blow up a mountain.
It occurred to her that she could use that power to hold the line now. But the power in those gems wasn't inexhaustible and would be impossible to refill without killing Julius's troops. She could never do that now. Even before she'd needed a curse to help drive her beyond a moral code.
This battle couldn't go on forever. Dracula was trying to strike fear in the soldiers with a seemingly endless wave of reinforcements. But Carrie had been there to build his dark army from the start. He was exhausting himself. His troops didn't go on forever and they'd eliminated a significant chunk of his reserve already. It could be hard to tell with demons, but the casualties were vast on both sides.
The crystal landscape gave the human soldiers a significant advantage. She could hold them up for a little longer.
That's when the doors at the far end of the corridor suddenly flew open, and a tall figure emerged hovering just above the floor.
"No, it can't be" Carrie said. He's never shown himself this early before. To risk his life above others would be selfless. He'd want to stay upstairs and exhaust his army first to minimize the dangers to his life. She took him for a coward, but she was severely mistaken.
Carrie's eyes blinked with their mystic power to confirm, and indeed the foe before her was none other than the Count Dracula, Ruler of Darkness.
The crystals she had been working to maintain all shattered in an instant. With the mere lift of a finger the Count sent magic exploding throughout the room like it were filled with methane. The temperature of the room soared like an oven. His powers echoed about the fortress like an exterminator pointing a poison wand at a horde of cockroaches. He cared not to distinguish between his forces and their own, there was only death. And he would continue until there was nothing left.
The crystals on her dress glowed with power as Carrie surged forward to meet her lifelong foe. The sounds of war dimmed as she ran. Its screams faded into an echo, as though hearing the faint cackling of static at the end of a long tunnel. She thought briefly of Julius, but pushed the distraction from her mind in preparation for her attack.
Julius looked up from the rubble as the crystals around him burst apart. A slab of stone had slammed into his back, and his lungs struggled to fill with air. Carrie was incredible. She dashed across the room with blinding speed, a trail of blue magic following her every step. A dullahan reached for her, but she spun beneath it and slashed its horse body in two without breaking a step. The creatures around her tumbled into pieces as though being consumed by a raging river.
"Carrie!" Julius cried, his lungs finally responding to his command. The room was burning. Julius broke a vial of holy water against his skin to guard from the heat. The air shimmered with the temperature. It was growing difficult to make her out as she continued towards the vampire. He stepped backward beyond the door, but Carrie showed no sign of halting her approach.
Julius stands, but before he can take a step the door slams shut behind them.
"Carrie!" Julius yelled, but she was long gone. He assumed a combat stance and quickly darted his eyes around him. There weren't any monsters. The magical orange lights around the room grew dim, but room was still cast in a red glow, this time emanating from the windows.
The room, once bare, is covered in bullet shells and the corpses of monsters. The soldiers that remain standing all look upon him, as though waiting for something.
"Alright" Julius said with a hard swallow. "Look for survivors, and do what you can for the wounded"
The soldiers do as he says, but from the condition of the room he can already tell there aren't many left.
"And please" Julius said. "Show respect for the dead"