The coffin lid slid off with ease as Alucard sheathed his sword in preparation to descend down the deep chasm hidden just below the coffins base. While much of the mausoleum was covered in dust and cobwebs, the coffin at the front of the room was smooth and decorated. Hiding shortcuts throughout the castle was an old trick of the dark lord although they were often better concealed. The urgency and fear of the count reflected in the very walls of this place.
There was a rush of cold vile air as he leapt down the tunnel. The steel in his boots clicked hard against the stone floor as he landed, a fall that would have killed any mortal man. If his calculations were correct, he should be somewhere in the underground waterway by now. But his destination lay deeper still.
A splash echoed across the walls to his rear. Some sort of aquatic demons no doubt. One was never truly alone inside this castle. Alucard raised a resolute hand and the tunnels blazed with fire. In the brief flash of light he caught a glimpse of hundreds of demonic bodies crawling about in the darkness. Mermaids, lizard men, medusa, specters and likely more he couldn't recognize. He drew his sword and slashed in a long spiral about him, digging deep into the flesh of some creature at his flank. The sounds amidst the dark suddenly grew to a roar and even with his nocturnal vision he could scarcely make out the shapes bouncing around him like a herd of zebras. He swung broadly and dove to the floor. A slobbery hiss roared in his ear left ear as he slide between the bodies. Their shrieks of pain and hunger shook the floor like a train.
"They're attacking themselves" Alucard thought. His demonic aura matched their own, and the dark was so thick not even creatures of the night could see in this madness. They endlessly attacked as their inner programming told them too, yet unable to tell friend from foe. It seemed most of their attacks would never be directed towards him. It was a risky trap for Dracula to place and may have proved fatal had any number of humans fell inside. To Alucard however, this was merely wasting his time. He placed a palm along the floor and broke a vial Olga had given him. A rush of steamy air swept through the halls that picked up far more particles of fishy flesh than his nose cared for, but the ground turned to ice. With a powerful thrust of his hind legs, he swept under the beasts. The air grew momentarily quiet as the monsters realized what had happened and Alucard reached the end of his ice slick. He quickly rose to his feet and shot small burst of flame ahead of him to light the way.
Alucard raced across the lower floors of the waterway with hordes of lizardmen running close behind. The flames he shot ahead lit his way like a strobe light, granting only brief bursts of visibility. Most of Dracula's monsters were mindless, and these were not an exception. This was the third time Alucard had wandered the halls of this reincarnation of the castle and he'd memorized much of the layout. Otherwise he'd have risked running into something at this speed. The area he was looking for shouldn't be too much farther ahead.
As he approached the larger room he fired a gust of demonic blaze at the monsters behind him. They hesitated, giving him just enough time to leap over the watery chasm onto a floating platform. Most adventurers would cling to the ledge with their lives, but he knew what lay in the depths below. Holding his breath, Alucard leapt from the ledge and plunged deep into the darkness. The monsters did not follow.
Alucard fell and fell and fell. His speed accelerated but he could not yet sense a bottom to his plunge. The thought lasted long enough for him to panic. He frantically let bursts of mana escape from his body towards the ground, trying to soften the fall. He took of his cloak and held it up to try and act as a parachute. The fall continued, and his vision faintly returned the longer he did. It felt like falling in reverse, as though accelerating up a wishing well towards the sunny surface.
His feet clanged hard onto the rocky floor and he rolled to absorb more of the fall. Even with his inhuman capabilities, his body ached and his shins felt like they were pricked with needles.
"My, I had not expected to ever see you lose your cool. I'm grateful to have been here to witness it" came a masculine voice.
Alucard slowly rose to his feet and readjusted his cloak. The figure was tall, wearing a red suit and a dark top hat. The man was familiar to him, but not one he was ecstatic to see.
"I'm sure you've deduced by now that this cavern is not a part of Dracula's castle "Alucard said. "Although I didn't expect it to be this deep."
The stony cave ahead lit bright as a beacon. Various crystals, of red, green, blue and violet mottled the floor and walls, their radiance combining to comb the brown earth in a brilliant white light. The path was glossy and smooth, reflecting the colors about the room like an oily mirror. It was almost as though they were standing in the sunlight.
"This isn't a part of the castle? Are you so sure?" Saint Germaine said.
"I am, although it seems to be tied in with the castles cycle of reincarnation. This place was attached later, like a parasite"
"That is quite the enigma. Then you must truly believe what the whispers are saying? That this is, the end of the dark lord's reign?"
"In one sense of the word, perhaps" Alucard said, looking the man straight on, never letting his third eye lose track of his aura. He knew what the "Saint" was capable of. "Your meddling in this will not be necessary"
"Me? Of course not I would never dream of it" said the man in red. He took a step back waved his hands about the air in front of him like a clown. "Naturally I can't reveal the full reasons behind my travels, but it's more a matter of, shall we say bookkeeping."
"For your own sake, I'd hope so" Alucard said. "Many stronger men than you have already died this evening, and the night has just begun"
The man disappeared in a cloud of golden smoke without uttering another word.
Alucard continued walking down the bright corridor. He had been here once before during his initial scouting of the castle, but the caverns have since shifted slightly and the location is much deeper in the ground than before. Could Dracula be attempting to alter the structure of the castle above to prevent this place from having any effect? Or had he simply hoped that the greater fall would kill any unwelcome visitors?
"Your strategies are growing erratic father" Alucard said. "It's different to know what fear is like from this side of things isn't it?"
The crystals were glowing brighter as well. Even without a greater understanding of magecraft he could see the interconnectedness of each node in the system. The entire cavern was constructed like a giant matrix, each crystal acting as a node of information channeling in and between the others. It reminded him of a neural network, almost as if the very room was alive.
The path widened into an enormous opening, like a bubble of air deep beneath the soil. A soothing wind glistened just enough to tickle his cheek. The room was more radiant than he remembered, but the slab of stone lay familiar at the end of the room just as he had last seen it. Broken shards of crystalline still lay scattered around it. This was the chamber where Carrie had hibernated for longer than a century until the day a vampire hunter stumbled upon this spot barely a year ago. This place wasn't just a makeshift time machine however, it was composed from human souls harvested with black draculian magic and transformed through alchemy into a matrix tied into the castles cycle of incarnation. The source of Dracula's immortality. It had become a part of the castle itself, and therefore could never be destroyed so long as the castle stood over it.
Alucard dug into his pockets and grabbed hold of a small rounded object. The talisman glistened gold as he drew it into the light. It was a transcendental object crafted by the Hakuba clan designed to bridge interdimensional barriers. He placed it upon the stone slab and held up a rounded stone with inscriptions carved along its edge.
"For a venerated sorrow, and a beacon of prayer to all lost in the eternal darkness" Alucard said. The stone burst into flames, and the broken crystals about the floor shook and writhed about. He turned and departed from the chamber as the pieces flew and reassembled the hibernation complex, keeping the talisman permanently in place. Now the castle would forever hold ties to the Hakuba shrine over Japan, the rest would be up to them.
Alucard had a long climb waiting for him.
"CLEAR!" Olga shouted as the walls blasted apart. Her ears rang with a high pitched squeal that made the air seem silent as they returned to normal. The sun had just begun to show through a sliver over the horizon, and the cold stone glistened with morning dew. Over the castle, the faint cries of battle could be heard as Jonathon and the main forces struggled against that monster. But it wasn't the shrieks of death, or the corpses now visible among the courtyard, or the explosion in front of her that halted her breath. It was the realization that from this angle, between towers shooting into the clouds, she could see the stairway leading into Dracula's chamber. There it was. The sight of it terrified her. She fought against the aching of her bones to tremble before it.
"Ma'am? Are we ready to engage?" came a sudden voice. Olga shook her head out of the daze. They were still on along the walls just outside of the castle tower. A new doorway was now open, beckoning them inside. She was unsure whether to expect a welcome, or if the remaining forces had all followed Adramelech outside. A hand grabbed her shoulder as she started to walk forward. "Are you sure it's safe?" came the soldiers voice. Olga brushed the hand aside and walked into the center of the rumble, kicking a loose brick off the edge as she entered. The troops must have thought her insane for walking in so casually, but in reality she was just glad to get out of sight of that thing.
"It's empty" Olga said.
The troops followed her inside, and swept across the ledges within the area. It was an open room, filled with stairs and elevators and ledges. Candles illuminated the dark windowless arena, even as sunlight began to flood the opening they had made.
Olga walked to the edge and looked down. The tower continued as far as the eye could see. It looked almost fake, with the walls curving towards the center of her vision like a painting. Not because they actually narrowed, but because of the sheer depth of the tunnel.
"It's like an elevator" Olga said. "This must have been how Dracula managed to assemble such an army of forces to one location. He channeled them up from the deep."
"If that's the case then we can expect more company soon" Clovis said.
"Not necessarily" Olga said. "This place is Dracula's Chapel, it's designed as a mockery of the word, but it doesn't have to stay that way." She looked carefully at the small alters scattered throughout the room. The closest was against the wall ten meters or so to her right. Candles lined up and down the table. A dark painting hung along the wall with mixtures of reds and oranges curling around within. At the center of the alter sat a statue of a horned man, standing straight and bare chested with an infant squished beneath its feet.
"The principle may be different, but the design is almost the same" Olga said. She turned to the Bishop and asked "Would it be possible to transform sections of this tower into real blessed areas and keep them free of monsters?"
The idea could serve dual purposes. It would limit the transportation of monsters within the tower, and serve as a safe space for adventurers to rest.
As the priests scattered to go about their work, Olga had Clovis set up a perimeter to keep watch. She pulled a suitcase from the supply pack and clicked it open. The device inside was heavy, with a numerical button pad and a chorded phone. Naturally, the phone calls it made were encrypted.
"Heya Motoko" Olga said to the user on the other end of the line.
"Hello Olga" said Motoko, the current shrine maiden at Hakuba shrine. "The connection has been made. You friend must be quite resourceful to have made it through this quickly."
"Glad to hear it. But actually, we've fallen behind schedule. We are mere hours away from totality and still have a long way to go. Just be ready for us when it happens. Don't wait for a call. Assume everything is in position."
"Understood Ma'am"
"Thank you sweetheart, and God bless" Olga said, and hung up the phone. "We are going to need it."
The blast of green magic tore through the dissolving image of Count Dracula before exploding into the wall.
"WHERE ARE YOU COWARD!?" Carrie screamed. But she was met with silence. The sounds of battle grew still the moment the door closed behind her. All she could hear was the thumping of her chest and the loud high pitched whine of her glowing hands.
She took to her left and started running through the empty halls. The sky beyond the glass windows was beginning to light up with the rising sun. Years ago she remembered these windows vibrating with peeking eyes, and zombies rushing at her from the floor. "Argh" Carrie yelled as she flung her hands towards the empty window. The glass shattered and a breeze rushed to fill the room with cold morning air. She was alone.
"Oh no" Carrie said. She fell with her back against the wall and sat upon the floor. "They just wanted to get me away from Julius" She realized it now. It had all been a trap, a simple one. One she should have known better then to rush into.
Now wasn't the time for remorse. She could take on the dark lord alone if she had to. She had that kind of strength. Yet still, her heart ached. "It's stupid, everything here is stupid" Carrie said, realizing at the sound of her own words how childish she must have sounded. She wasn't like this the first time she toured the castle. She had been stoic, resolute, and strong. Imperfect, but successful.
The path to defeat Dracula had always been one to be walked alone. To find love here was to be filled with sorrow and loss. Nothing but death and bad news ever came to be within these walls. Her thoughts drifted back to that foolish man she had once traveled with. He saved her life once, but ultimately fell victim when he fell in love with a vampire. Anyone could have guessed how that would have ended. This wasn't a fairy tale, there was no magical end all called love that would grant characters invincible plot armor. Reinhardt and Rosa. Vampire and Vampire killer. What a joke.
Anger stirred in her, and she was introspective enough to notice. Julius was different than that young fool. He was stronger, and wiser, capable of handling his own against true ancestral vampires. She felt safe around him, even more so than she did that day Reinhardt saved her.
"But what of the trap that was laid for you here? You may need the assistance of a witch like myself in the future." Carrie had said during her first embark within the castle at 12 years old.
"That may be, but Dracula could just as likely employ a tactic where my whip could be used to bring your downfall. Such an alliance is not a wise idea. We are not compatible me and you." Reinhardt said, quietly taking a sip from his flask. "And besides, joining forces shouldn't matter from this point on. The creatures within this castle, to them this is home. They move about these halls without difficultly, without thinking. For a creature to truly match the powers of Dracula within his own residence, moving about should be as simple as breathing. If you cannot even go about wandering this place like you would a house, you shouldn't even think about facing the Dark Lord."
*Hmph*, Carrie sighed as she stood. "Walking through this castle? That's nothin'! You'll regret this one day Belmont, when you climb the ultimate staircase to find Dracula's corpse waiting for you." Carrie turned and began walking up one of the nearby stairways. "If I'm merciful enough to leave you even that" She could remember the sounds of Reinhardt's laughter echoed off the walls behind her as she left. That was the last she ever saw of him alive.
Carrie sighed and got back on her feet. "Some things never change, but a lot has" she said. That line he had said to her at the end, was she really remembering it correctly? Its foreshadowing seemed uncanny.
"Moving about should be as simple as breathing" Carrie said, taking a deep breath. "It's certainly easier to do when the halls are as empty as this"
She walked along the next corridor and realized she recognized something. The castle changed during every reincarnation, but some structures and the ultimate layout remained the same each time. The area before her lay out in a long hallway filled with doors on each side. Many of them were fake, and she knew from experience that a few would also attack were she to glance the handle. The third door on her left however, had a small strip of pink ribbon glued along its edge. Dracula had always hated that. She had wanted to color the entire door and fought with him for weeks about it, but in the end that was the most she could get. "Inside however" Carrie thought as she opened the door.
The inside of the door was painted elegantly with twists of pink and green. She'd carved small doodles into the door and along the walls. Many based on memories of her stepmother, but others were just silly drawings. "I wonder if it's still here" Carrie thought.
Her bed was covered in dust, but still decorated in emerald linen with a sheer like curtain draping overhead. She brushed a cobweb aside as she lifted the mattress and uttered a reverse spell of concealment onto the wood. The panel gave way, and a small suitcase popped into place, falling under the bed.
The chest popped open, and papers immediately fell out from the sides. That annoyed her a bit. The papers were still legible, but wouldn't contain anything of relevance. She never kept record of anything she'd be afraid of Dracula finding. Underneath the papers folded neatly was a green tunic, the one she had returned with after traveling overseas. She was much smaller then.
"Aha" she exclaimed. She reached into the chest and pulled out the blue soul gems. Then reaching into her own pouch at her side she grasped the metal top of Actriss's staff and pulled it from the special compression magic that allowed it to be stored there. The staff was a little past shoulder height when she stood. It shaft was golden and it ended in a half crescent moonlike shape with a blue soul gem nestled between two spikes where it connected to the rest. The gems in her hand glowed a little brighter as she held the staff. They were originally a part of the same structure, but their use was only compatible with the witch herself. Carrie had taken them apart and added new gems to claim the weapon as her own. She'd come a long way in understanding her abilities since then though, as she'd done so without any knowledge of how to realign magical properties. Her true gift.
The witch Actriss had used the soul gems to store the spirits of a hundred children in order to create her powers. Carrie had acquired it after tracking down and killing the witch during her early life with Dracula. Actriss had escaped during her initial ascension of the castle, and killing her helped to solidify her place at Dracula's side and build his trust. It was analyzing the staff's properties in this room that first gave her the idea of a soul matrix, intertwining the fates of thousands with those of the dark lord. She marched with Dracula's forces and slaughtered thousands in order to collect souls for her project hidden deep beneath the castle. Countless innocent souls murdered for her naive conception of a "greater good". Hopefully it would all payoff one day.
Carrie laughed as she realized "when" she was. It wouldn't be much longer.
But the pain of her crimes against humanity was indeed too much for her to bear at the time. She'd worked with Elof to develop a pseudo personality called Collar2 which took over for her in times of dark stress. That personality was destroyed long ago however. She'd done so shortly before marching to defeat Dracula a second time and sealing herself inside her chamber deep underground.
She noticed a shiny object inside the chest as well. More soul gems? She didn't remember storing extra ones there. They held tremendous magical potential and it wasn't unlike her to hide objects like that throughout the castle where she may later find them. But she could remember distinctly deciding against that idea, in fear that Dracula would find everything anyway and use them against her.
She reached down and picked up one of the shiny blue crystals. It was indeed filled with soul energy. She opened the pouch on her side and set the gems there alongside the Necronomicon.
A shiver suddenly swept along her body. She looked up to find the dark lord himself, standing at the door to her chamber.
"You know I always hated it when you did that. What's even the point of having a door if you phase though it all the time?" Carrie said. She closed her pouch and let the rings along her hands slowly build up with magical energy.
"I never owed you any such curtesy then, and I certainly wouldn't now" Dracula said. "You should be grateful I kept this room looking the way it was to begin with. It wasn't without its purposes however"
"Ha! You think I'd come to a place such as this expecting anything but a trap? Don't make me laugh Dracula. I've defeated you twice. I can do it again"
"I'd look forward to another dance with you child, but unfortunately I won't be your opponent today. You're different from before, I could tell just from the way you looked at him. And emotions such as those have a habit for lowering ones guard."
Carrie felt a growing heat rising from her stomach. She leapt back, realizing the heat was coming from her belt and not her insides, she ripped the belt in two with a slash from her weaponized rings. The floor burst into bright blue flame as the holy water inside exploded.
"What did you do?" Carrie said.
"My dear child. You really think I didn't realize what you'd been hiding all these years? Under the mattress was one of the first places I looked." Dracula said with a cruel laugh.
"I'll kill you!" Carrie yelled. She picked up Actriss's staff and the space around the doorway burst apart into iridescent crystals. As they exploded into shards she sent the pieces tearing apart in every direction like bullets. "You can't hide from me! I'll kill anyone who stands in my way. Nothing can stop me."
"I'm counting on it" came a voice as the room exploded.
"Fire again" Julius commanded. The archers and mages shoot concoctions of explosives and magic at the door without any noticeable effect.
"It's no use sir, we'd be better off going around, we could maybe try opening a new route by blowing open the east wall and…" said Astrid, one of his leading officers.
"It won't matter if we go around. If she dies so will our plan of killing the dark lord" Julius said.
"Only until his next reincarnation, sir" Astrid said. She was right of course, but hearing her say it pissed him off.
"No, we're getting in that room. Have the squad blow into the adjacent wall and try to enter through the East wing. We'll rendezvous with Jonathon's forces there as well" Julius said. "I don't care if we have to blow this castle apart brick by brick. We'll bomb the whole thing to hell if we need to"
He knew that Dracula would easily resist such mundane weapons, but it wasn't outside his resources to do so. It'd make him feel better at least. He grasped at the radio and set it to Jonathon's channel.
"Jonathon what's your status. Carrie's gone missing we need you over here" Julius said. He didn't care if he told prying ears where he was. He didn't care if he was altering the plans or centralizing the forces. Carrie was in trouble and he needed to get in there.
"Jonathon do you read me!" Julius said, but the radio returned static. An explosion sounded from his right, and he could see the soldiers clearing away the remaining rumble and the sound of gunfire as they cleared the hallway inside. He didn't move.
"We might not win this" Julius said.
"Sir?" Astrid said. He had forgotten she was there.
"If we can't get in there, we'll need to head straight to the top of the tower and defeat Dracula as is" Julius said. He was stating the obvious, which hadn't been like him. It was like he was an adolescent all over again, playing with a toy whip.
Julius marched back to the front of the team. The hallway was moderately filled with demons and peeking eyes, but it was nothing compared to the carnage they'd seen before. Julius hoped for a moment that it was because Dracula had exhausted most of his forces in that single battle, but knew he couldn't count on it.
Suddenly the wall alongside them exploded and a burst of emerald flame gushed out from the cracks. The blast engulfed their team as mages rushed to produce a shield from the demonic flame, too slow to save the dozens who caught the blunt of the attack. Julius rushed to the center and threw holy water into the rubble. He expected a rush of monsters to run forth, but all he could make out amidst the green flame was the faint feminine outline of a woman and the glisten of the golden staff in her hand.