Even the cults it seemed, had paperwork. Rastur sighed as he looked about the stone room that was his "office", a pile of reports waited for him, but he had read them already. Sitting behind his oaken desk he lamented having to talk to Count Olrox again. Though he knew that for a vampire at least, Olrox had quite a bit of patience, the fact that their attempts had been failing this dramatically and quickly were cause for alarm.
The last report stated they barely got though the preamble of the ritual to call back Castlevania from the Eclipse when there was a major backlash of energy from the Eclipse itself. Nearly half of the members of the ritual were killed in the process. This was very bad as Rastur was already starting to run out of expert ritualists.
He barely recognized the sound of one of his messengers entering and adding another report to the pile. Not wanting to read it, he sighed as reports of pushback in all quarters of this war against humanity has forced a quiet stalemate for the time being. He idly grabbed the envelope off the top, and pondered just how he was going to break the stalemate, when he noted the note was from Japan.
Rastur wasted no more time opening it and reading the contents. Apparently, the church lost one of it's best mages who just so happened to be one of the best ritualists the church had. A young prodigy named Mayumi. The report also stated that 'With Light' failed in their attempts to capture her, and were trying because they learned this Mayumi was trying to resurrect Dracula for her own goals.
"I must have her before Ikari gets his hands on her," Rastur decided.
II: Join or Die
Mayumi opened her eyes. Her vision reddened considerably. A warning perhaps that she shouldn't push too far, but Mayumi for all her seeming cuteness and innocence from outside inspection had something inside of her, egging her on, pushing her into more and more extreme acts…. All but begging her to unleash her potential and show these buffoons just what they were dealing with.
"You want to know why I'm so resistant to fall into that 'true nature' you seem so obsessed with? Let me show you…"
Dark energy surrounded her in an aura that caused the very air to turn cold. The closest cultists stepped back, using their off-hands to raise a ward before them. But it would never be enough to protect them from what was about to happen. They watched as the cold was creeping closer, ice along the ground seemed to grow in their direction. Then it reached the closest cultist, and stuck him to the floor. He screamed and shrieked as the ice quickly climbed up his body, freezing him solid. Cultists tried to back away from the spreading cold but it suddenly picked up speed causing mass confusion. Once it finally reached its limit, almost half of the cultists were frozen solid.
Mayumi held a hand before her and snapped her fingers, the frozen cultist shattering like glass at the same instant. With fear now pulsing in the veins of the cultists, they were unwilling to press the attack and started to break and run.
Dimitrii stood at the edge of the cold. Even now he didn't dare touch the ice.
"Satisfied?" Mayumi asked.
Dimitrii punched the ground, a column of energy enveloped him, though the slow speed of the buildup indicated this spell was more complex than simple teleportation.
"We cannot deny what we are," Dimitrii replied with an oddly satisfied grin on his face."
"And what would that be?"
Dmitrii chuckled a moment as the teleportation spell neared completion. "Hell-bound," was his response. And with that, he faded into nothing with the column of energy following shortly after.
A moment later, Mayumi dropped to her knees, breathing hard.
"May! Are you alright?" Yoko kneeled next to her, a hand on her friend's shoulder. "You channeled too much energy at once I think."
"It wasn't the channeling that drained me," she said in a low voice between breaths. "It was holding it in check."
Yoko's eyes widened as she realized the implications of this. The girl was having issues keeping her immense power under control.
"How long have you had this problem?"
"Always," Mayumi replied. She was on both knees and placed her hands on her thighs as she lowered her head and calmed her inner storm. Her heart was still racing from the exertion of holding her power back. "It's only become harder these last four years."
"If you don't get this under control, you'll burn out and likely die."
"This is why the research is important to me."
"But why, May? Why are you researching Dracula?"
Mayumi got her breathing under control at last and stood up, Yoko following.
"Because I have reason to believe he's responsible for it," Mayumi replied. "No matter if it was directly or indirectly. If I follow his story closely enough, maybe I can get the answers I need; all of them, including the biggest question of my life."
"That being?" Yoko asked sadly.
Mayumi looked down, trying not to cry as she thought about the events of the last six years.
"Why… Why am I cursed?"
Yoko stood silent, watching Mayumi trying to hold back the tears, before simply hugging the girl, and hearing to some relief, she was finally letting it out.
"Keep the book," Yoko whispered. "I don't know how much it will help you… but I think it's better off in your hands now."
"Thank you," Mayumi whispered, removing her glasses and wiping away her tears.
"You owe me big for this one, sister."
Mayumi just nodded.
"I better get back to the church before word gets to them about this incident. I can only hope they don't find out I helped you."
"Good luck," Mayumi wished.
"To both of us."
A small chapel with a library could be found in the north west district of the city. Finding no one using it at the moment, Mayumi went inside and sat down with the manuscript. She opened it and started to skim the pages talking about Walachia and its culture, and then she found the information about a girl named Lisa.
Mayumi read on. She read about how strong willed Lisa was, and how she was looking for better ways to help people. Lisa was a doctor, determined to find methods to help people that didn't involve leaches and bloodletting. Her search led her to Castlevania, to the home of Count Dracula. There she met the count and initially found him stubborn and trying to be scary, but Lisa wasn't having it. She knew this man… this vampire… had the answers and she wasn't going to leave without them. Admiring her strong will and fearlessness, as well as her passion for science, he agreed to help her. As time went on, they fell in love, even going so far as to having a half-vampiric son named Adrian.
The thought brought a smile to Mayumi's face. To think someone as supposedly evil as Dracula could fall for a human woman, and even become involved in her quest to help a species he must have deep down despised due to their inferiority.
One day Dracula decided he wanted to see this world Lisa was so enamored with, and said the castle was able to be moved wherever he wanted, but Lisa insisted that if wishes to see how we (as in humanity) truly lived, he should travel as a man. And so, he did, leaving for some time. During that time, Lisa used her teachings to great effect, saving many lives and helping a lot of people in the process. But as that time passed, the church started to take note, and believed, incorrectly that she was using black magic to heal people. For how could a simple woman have greater power to heal than the church?
Lisa was captured, tried as witch and sentenced to burn. Mayumi became upset as she read this, thinking about how hypocritical this was. But that's when another intrusive thought came into her head, but this wasn't a thought… it was a memory…
Nine-year-old Mayumi was being held in place by a priest. She cried out for her mother who was being tied to a stake in the middle of the church courtyard.
"Nanari Yamagishi!" The high priest yelled. "You have been found guilty by the Holy Tribunal of the use of Black Magic, and cavorting with Daemonic Entities. You have been sentenced to death by burning. I will now carry out that sentence. May your death pay for your crimes in life, and may God have mercy upon your blackened soul."
"NO!" Mayumi screamed again, trying to get free. They forced her down, forced her to watch.
The pyre was lit…
The screaming began…
And a child cried in anguish while the rest of the crowd cheered for their own self-righteous victory…
Mayumi wiped her tears away, as she continued reading. Reliving her mother's execution was not pleasant, but she needed to know more.
The manuscript at this point talks about how Dracula returned the day of the execution but too late to stop it. He found Lisa's hospital burned to the ground, was told by another citizen about what happened, and he told the citizen to take her family and leave Walachia that night, never to return.
He gave the citizens of Walachia one year to make peace before he would literally unleash hell upon them. The war cannot be found in any history books because the Church managed to suppress all knowledge of the event from public record. Some even think this incident may be part of the conspiracy theory known as "The Second Phantom Time", where an entire section of our history seems to be missing or incomplete. Of course, the church would hide something like that. After all, they tried to take the memory of her mother's execution.
And that memory returned just over a year ago. She confronted the archbishop about what happened and he tried to have her memory wiped again. This time it would not take, and Mayumi broke her vows, leaving the church to seek her own path against evil. It was during the last year that she learned the church knew about her dark power and secretly wanted to try to gain control of it for the greater good. They were researching Dracula and looking for a connection between the Dark Lord and her mother they believed somehow existed. They didn't trust Mayumi with the dark power which is why they tried to keep it subsumed. It was after she left the church that her dark powers first started to manifest, and the multitude of dark rituals and how to conduct them began to seep into her mind as if the knowledge was being unlocked.
But she needed answers. Why was her mother executed? Did she have the dark power too? How did she get it? And why was the church so interested in trying to find a connection between her mother and Dracula?
This was the principal reason she felt Dracula had to be somehow behind it all. But Dracula has been sealed behind an eclipse for as long as she's been alive, longer in fact as she was born nearly three years after the event. Did Dracula give her mother the power? And if so, how did she get it being born so long after the fact? If her mother did make a pact with a demon, it had to have happened during the nine months before she was born. That would explain why she also had access to the dark magic. But if that were true, why did her mother make such a pact, and what did the demon get out of it?
The manuscript went on to talk about the war and the involvement of Trevor Belmont, and his allies, a sorceress, and Dracula's own son who wanted his father to stop trying to conquer the planet, knowing his mother wouldn't approve of her husband's rampage.
Mayumi sighed. There was precious little information about demonic pacts in the book, though it did confirm that Dracula had minions that were called forth from the burning hells. Many of those souls became adopted by Dracula and the castle itself. Without access to Lucifer's vast power, how were the demons able to initiate pacts, unless it was Dracula's power they were using instead. Mayumi's head swam. If that were true, Dracula truly was more than just a vampire, but a force of evil itself, and such a being could grant powerful boons, and access to dark magic.
A sound out of place drew her attention from the book. She closed her eyes, calling on a clairvoyance spell to detect living beings nearby and gasped as she realized there were dozens, all around the outside of the building. She quickly made the book vanish into her personal dimensional storage space, and dashed for the doors out the back. She knew she would be seen, but that was okay, she needed to get them away from the church. As she ran out into the field behind the chapel, she heard them shout her position and noted with disdain that they were not from 'With Light' but wearing very different robes, mostly red and black. That in itself didn't bode well.
She only got around halfway through the field towards the woods when more red robed cultists blinked in ahead of her. Mayumi stopped and took stock of the situation she was in, there were at least three dozen cultists and they were now effectively surrounding her though none were drawing weapons, a few were readying defensive spells.
"Leave me alone!" she yelled. "I don't know who you people are, but whatever this is about I'll have nothing to do with it."
"You might change your mind," one of the members offered as he stepped in front of the circle.
"That's close enough," Mayumi warned.
"No need to be defensive, I just want you to hear me out," he continued. "My name is Rastur. I'm here representing the 'Sons of Shaft'."
Mayumi raised an eyebrow. "That bad motherf-"
"Why does everyone keep saying that?!" Rastur interrupted. "Anyhow, it's come to our attention that you're looking for answers… answers the church can't or simply won't give you. We can help in that regard."
"What do you know about my search," Mayumi asked.
"I know about Nanari Yamagishi."
Just hearing someone else say her name in that context took her breath away. Whether she liked it or not, he had her undivided attention now.
"You were… what… six when that happened? They made you watch didn't they."
Mayumi couldn't control the tear that slipped from her eye and simply nodded.
"And they call us destructive," Rastur noted sardonically. "Nanari was a master of the dark arts, and used it brilliantly in the service of the church. Archbishop Claudius coveted that power, but couldn't attain it himself due to his own vows. He wanted a weapon he could use to defeat the demons with their own power… fight fire with fire as it were. And you… you were meant to be that weapon."
Mayumi pulled herself out of her slump. "You… you know how my mother gained her powers?"
"Your mother was the closest thing this world has seen in a long time to a living saint, but she was curious of the dark powers in the hands of the enemies of the church. She felt she could control those powers and they would be even more effective when used against the darkness. Whether she was correct or not, who can say, but despite wanting to battle evil, when she asked, an Archdemon of Castlevania answered her summons."
"So, I was on the right track after all," Mayumi noted. "Dracula does have the power to grant boons like the devil can."
Rastur smiled. "Indeed, young witch. Some would say that Dracula's power surpasses that of Lucifer Morningstar himself, as the fallen one can't interfere in the world anymore. But the demon was only acting in Dracula's stead. There were circumstances that prevented Dracula from granting the boon directly. Even still, the power held, and your mother pledged her loyalty to the Dark Lord.
"The demon effectively impregnated your mother with the soul of a Witch, one of the most powerful magic users of Castlevania. At that moment, your mother underwent a form of Parthenogenesis."
Mayumi's eyes widened at the implication of that. "Then… I really don't have a father."
"No, my dear, effectively, your mother impregnated herself, in order to ensure that she would be able to fulfill her duty to Lord Dracula. That's why you looked like her twin, right down that tiny little mole on your face."
Mayumi touched the tiny mark on her face just below and to the left of her mouth. It was small, very easy to miss unless you knew it was there. Her mother had the exact same mark, and now she knew why… assuming Rastur was telling the truth.
"The Witch's soul provided your mother with the knowledge she needed, and then merged with your own soul. You were meant to do Dracula's work outside of the lost castle once you were free of the church. And that brings us to why we are here."
"I'm listening."
"In short… we need your help," Rastur explained. "By order of someone much higher on the food chain than I am, we're attempting to pull Castlevania back from the Eclipse. Thusfar our efforts have been fruitless… but you my dear… you have the power to complete the ritual and bring the master's castle back."
"And that would bring Dracula back as well?"
Rastur hesitated. "No… that situation is more… shall we say, complex. The Master is not within Castlevania."
Mayumi thought about what she was told… things weren't adding up to her. Magical Parthenogenesis was theoretically possible, but that required a metric ton of light magic, and shouldn't be possible using black magic, not without some great cost. Demons providing boons certainly seemed plausible, but claiming Dracula was more powerful than Satan seemed like a massive stretch. They call Dracula the Prince of Darkness but Satan also has that title, and of the two, the fallen angel in her mind would be far more powerful than any vampire, even one as famous as Vlad. Then there was the mention of Archbishop Claudius. She knew for a fact that he despises the dark arts and would never stoop to the level of using them, even if he knew they would be effective against other demons and monsters.
"So, what do you say, child?"
Mayumi deliberated only a couple of seconds more before she replied. "No, I don't believe any of this. Claudius would never stoop to the level of using black magic, and parthenogenesis is impossible with the black arts."
"Underestimations of the highest," Rastur countered. "Claudius is not as pious as you would like to believe, and black magic can do many things… far more than you can know."
"But I do," Mayumi countered. "After all, I do believe the part where my soul was derived from that of a Witch, and I know the limitations of the dark arts. The sacrifices that would have had to have been made were beyond my mother's tolerance for evil."
Rastur said nothing for a moment before sighing heavily. "I really wanted this to be your decision, but I'm afraid I can't just let you walk way. You're far too dangerous."
"Ah… I remember now," Mayumi interjected. "Shaft was a priest who resurrected Dracula long ago. He wanted to purge the world in chaos, thought of Dracula as a living god. I knew from the moment you mentioned the Sons of Shaft, I couldn't trust a single thing that came out of your mouth."
"I'm afraid I have to insist young witch," Rastur demanded. "The castle must be called back to the world. And you are far too dangerous to be allowed to reach your full potential." The mages around her began to draw knives and prepare spells. "This is your last chance. Join us, or die."
Mayumi took in her situation; surrounded by mages and summoners on all sides, some were already calling monsters of various types to the field. Rastur himself seemed formidable, perhaps even on the same level as Dimitrii who she had issues fighting. And if she lost control of her powers here, she could cause far too much collateral damage as there were homes beyond the edge of the woods and both sides of the field. She didn't rate her chances of surviving this engagement very high, especially without her friend backing her up.
Suddenly Mayumi noticed the cool breeze, she looked up and noted it was suddenly very overcast, the sun fully hidden beyond a blanket of clouds. Rastur looked around feeling the cold wind suddenly grip the area. This was followed by bunch of screams. He turned towards the source seeing many of his men suddenly flying through the air as if throw by a great force. More were suddenly launched in the other direction from the same area causing the group to part. In a split second their numbers had been reduced by a full dozen sorcerers.
"You always overplay your hand, Rastur." Came a voice Rastur didn't want hear.
"Ikari," he hissed watching the young man in his black trencher with a raised collar striding though the space made, and his summoned Sword Lord walking behind him with its sword held over the shoulder casually. The group reoriented to one side, Rastur backing up to the other side of Mayumi.
Mayumi took in the sight of this young man and for the first time in her life, something woke up in her. The girl's heart started beating faster in her chest, she felt a flush come over her cheeks and realized she was starting to blush. Butterflies suddenly became quite active in her stomach, and she knew in that moment she was crushing on this young man very hard. His cobalt blue eyes and slightly pale, flawless skin burning into her memory in that instant. In her mind, he was beautiful… perfect even.
"Surprised to see me?" Shinji replied, his voice reaching Mayumi's ears like a soothing blanket over her dark soul, and she knew instantly that she should trust him. "I'm a little surprised to see you here in Kushiro. Here I thought all the action was much further south."
"This doesn't concern you, Ikari," Rastur warned.
"Oh, but I think it does," Shinji countered. "You see, whenever I see any of the cults up to something… I just can't help but get involved, even if only to ruin your morning cup of tea, as it were. Though here… it seems I've interrupted something far more important; what with all this talk about calling back the castle, and dark pacts with demons. And well… the idea of destroying one of your plans always excites me."
Mayumi made a snap decision, suddenly breaking away from being so close to Rastur, and running straight to this young man who seemed to have come to her rescue out of nowhere. One of the cultists tried to grab her and was suddenly split in two from crown to crotch by the Sword Lord. Mayumi hid behind Shinji but watched in satisfaction as the cultist fell into two, spilling his entrails as both halves of the body fell. The cultists readied themselves in response.
Mayumi looked upon this summoned monster, realizing of all the summoned creatures she has seen in her short life, this one was far more powerful than any of them. Over 7' tall, fully armored with a fortress pauldron on one shoulder and a sword that had to be at least twice as long as she was tall, it was an intimidating sight.
"My reinforcements are already on the way," Rastur warned. "And I see you are without your companions."
"Firstly, I don't need my companions to fight the likes of you and your cult. And reinforcements? Do you honestly think that more cannon fodder is going to stop me?" Shinji retorted. "I think I'm going to enjoy this…"
So save your prayers,
For when we're really gonna need'em
Throw out your cares and fly…
Wanna go for a ride?
"Who is this handsome man that has come to my aid? And why does he seem so familiar yet not? Maybe he can help me find out the truth about my powers…"
Next Chapter: Darksoul Rising
