Castlevania: Aria of the Ascending Soul
Written By: Lady Lunar Phoenix
Beta By: Lady Lunar Phoenix
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Weighted, both the Castle as it fed and grew as a tick on a blood vein, and its shadow. A reminder of what exactly hung in the air above them. The Castle continued to expand, causing every slow step to feel further away from getting out from under it. The air quivered with the sound of glass breaking the way dried leaves crunched in the autumn. Darkness made the distant forest invisible with the Castle blocking the moonlight as it was.
Alexis drifted along the air down to meet up with Lord Alucard and Yoko, her eyes anxiously seeking out any sign of danger or injury. Yoko was easily the least in danger so it was easy to shift her attention over to the other two. Despite his horrific injuries, Lord Alucard moved with ease and grace, his head ever held proudly high.
While Dracula moved comparatively slower with his steps more deliberate. Despite Lord Alucard having gone through, he moved with more ease than Dracula. In fact from a different angle it would have appeared that Dracula was leaning against Lord Alucard. With only pride keeping Dracula walking as the ground drastically began to curve upwards.
Darkness stirred easily at her approach pushing her back as both hunters observed her presence. Unsure if she could or should push against a clear rebuff she looked for guidance from the pair of hunters. Yoko's expression one of helpless futility, looking from the LeCarde before her then lower towards the steep incline.
"Soma..." Yoko began tilting her head towards wall of the crater they stood within. "How are you getting up there?"
"Hmm? You don't expect me to leave the Castle again do you?" Soma asked his tone a bit distracted as he also looked up at the crater before him.
"Yes," Yoko dragged the lone word out as she turned to face him better, the grinding of the glass underfoot serving as the base.
"Easier to kill me again hmm?" Soma replied good naturedly, "no matter, die in the Castle and resurrect or die outside of it and reincarnate. I wonder what I'll look like next time," he commented as he looked down. Raising one pale hand to study it in what light there was.
"Soma!" Jointly Alucard and Yoko spoke the name as one, with one in barely suppressed anger, the other in outright worry.
"Now children let me have my fun," Soma countered in a conciliatory tone.
"'Children!'" Yoko huffed before flicking Soma in the forehead. "Where's your reset button? I want my floofy Soma back!" She began jabbing at him as though he was some artificial life form and she was looking for a button that would fix everything.
If only such a thing existed.
For despite the fact that he was speaking Japanese with all its appropriate honorifics, he spoke as one much older than all of them. His eyes carried a sincere, albeit fatigued, gratitude. An emotion borne from the waves of events in his past that kept trying to drown him. Leaving Soma feeling painfully alone and helpless, with all his old senses coming back into play.
Spells he knew and forgotten, alternate uses for the souls he had amassed, the early evening studies and discussions. Were old hat as he had already remassed those memories. Rather it was the simpler things; conversations, battle fields, saints and sinners. Amid all those memories, it bore the weight of the abyss. For really how 'old' was he? He spanned nine hundred years, but in truth he had lived less than three hundred of those.
With each new resurrection he was confronted with a new degree of advancement among humans. Now reincarnated, all this knowledge was balanced with his history. 'Could only have done worse for myself if I had chosen a psychology major to pursue...' Soma thought in exhausted ruefulness. 'Then I could just psychoanalyze myself...'
Leaving Soma pondered to himself how he 'would' climb out. Souls under his command had yet to be reabsorbed, and he couldn't find them around him at the moment. He wasn't even sure if he had absorbed him when he snapped and dragged the Castle here. The feeling of absorbing the souls the second time were less noticeable than the first time. It had been amassing repeated souls of the same type that instead got his notice that time.
"Would it help if I said I haven't left?" he offered offhandedly. Yet what would be the fall out if he tried to 'use' those souls was now the question.
Soma blinked as Yoko leaned as far in as she could to look him in the eye. Shades of gold that greeted her instead of the more terrifying near black red eyes he had bore not an hour before. He could see the relief wash over her, from the sigh to the way her whole stance slipped just so.
"If you 'never left' than you should not have come here to start with," Alucard finally snarked, barely turning his head enough to glare at Soma over his shoulder.
Earning a parental sigh of resignation from Soma, "I've put as much in order as I possibly can to help you. Lest you have forgotten, I can't just do things 'orderly' as much as I used to or as you would prefer. There's going to be elements of chaos to it that I can't predict." With that Soma jabbed an accusatory index finger out towards the Dhampire. "If you had not slipped up and been captured, 'I' would not have had a parental relapse and panicked about you. As much as it may bother you to remember. 'Parents protect their children' regardless of blood or DNA. I can die a million times and come back in a new body each time. I'll always 'be' your parent and I'll always worry."
"And if you boys have the energy to argue, you have the energy to yeet yourselves up over this crater back to proper ground!" Yoko interjected with a huge smile and a panicked, 'Don't fight, don't fight! I'm not in a mood to play referee!'
Soma, bless his soul, was more willing to humor her by looking away from his irate child and sighing. "I don't know if I have that soul with me what with the ring kind of malfunctioning now."
Distracted for a moment, Yoko watched as her stomach dropped into her feet, for Soma summoned a familiar. Not just any familiar, but the Harpy that he had summoned before when they were in Fortner's castle. As fierce and wild eyed as when she first appeared, at least the harpy didn't attack them at least. Instead he merely reached up to her and with one taloned foot she grasped his arm, spreading her wings and lifted him up.
Yoko, realizing how Soma was 'yeeting himself' was ready to perform her own double jump, only to see Alucard still standing there. The wind was only now starting to slip into the area, yet it wasn't strong enough to move a hair on the Dhampire Princes' head. As still as a shadow he could have been made of darkness itself. She thought about the conversation and quietly she finally gave a soft, "its not your fault Al."
He didn't move, for all the world it would have appeared that he didn't hear what she said. Especially with how softly she spoke, yet she knew he heard her as easily as she knew he wouldn't respond. Alucard didn't speak of his personal feelings often, yet that spoke volumes in and of itself. Growing up she had learned how to drag out anything if she was annoying enough. But personal stuff? Nothing she said could breach him.
So as he jumped up to escape their demonically glorified sand trap Yoko could only suspect that Soma's comment had hurt Al. It made sense in a way, the Dhampire was such a planner that this must have been like watching it all unravel before his eyes. 'Oh well Al, its not like you're alone in this! I'm certainly pulling to keep Soma with us.' She thought as she joined in and jump out of the sand trap, with Alexis floating quickly to be at Alucards' side. Fussing over the Dhampire Prince as her family tended to do.
The harpy familiar was gone by the time Yoko arrived, leaving it just the four of them and the Castle behind them.
"Perhaps it would be wise to go to Aljiba? We can't stay here after all, not everyone is fit to travel," Alexis reported politely. "Though given what the cults did in the town, many were asleep when I left. Those who realized that something was up holed themselves up inside their homes."
"Asleep?" Soma repeated, as though the idea had some held an appeal to him.
"Yes, the cults used a sleep potion of sorts in the water supply and took down the towers used for outside communication."
The report got Yoko to nod as it explained her situation back on the bus... "There were 'cops' waiting that waylaid the bus I was on. They reported a gas leak and forced the bus to turn around, but its supposed to be back to..." Yoko paused to look for the moon and realizing Soma messed 'that' up to resumed. "morrow."
"They're going to be in for a surprise with the Castle just floating in the air like that," Alexis noted looking up at said entity.
"It will land, it will land..." Soma replied, his tone conciliatory again as he backed up a bit to put Alucard between himself and the two women. "And Julius is coming too if I sense things right."
The Dhampire turned to look at Soma, still unable to express any other emotion than barely suppressed irritation "Vampire Killer?"
"Yes, Sara feels positively irritated at me. I think she didn't want me to wake her up again," Soma replied ruefully. Then his shoulders sagged as he heard 'Sara?' repeated by the two women with him. "Well who in their right mind names their daughter 'Vampire Killer'? She was a... oh..." Soma sighed as he stepped a little closer to Alucard for safety.
"So the soul of Vampire Killer is the soul of a young lady I knew back when I was human..."
His voice faded out as the two women just stared in shock. Both processing the idea that he knew where Vampire Killer came from. More over, that hanging threat that he might know how to 'unmake' the Vampire Killer. Which was in itself a problem. If he knew how to unmake it, why didn't he?
"Aljiba is this way?" Soma asked as he tilted his head towards the town and began to walk away. In that quiet sort of 'if I leave now no one can ask questions or kill me' manner.
"Yes, but if Vampire Killer is active won't that mean Julius will impulsively try to kill you?" Yoko asked worriedly. She followed Soma into the darkness, watching as it eagerly consumed his white coated presence, rapidly turning it gray.
"Yes, that's kind of how the curse works," Soma confessed with a faint shrug. "Well maybe if I'm lucky Julius can rein it in since I'm not being aggressive. I mean the first time could have been a flub due to Vampire Killer not being used to me like this."
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It was almost creepy the way Richter sat in the hallway. Before they could call out or get Richters' attention, the hunter stood back up and went to the door on the right. Propped up on his feet he pawed at the door with a rather fixed attention. Leaving Juste and Christopher exchanging glances in confusion before approaching him. For all intents and purposes the hallway appeared empty, and there was a passing thought that he was looking for someone.
"Elmo seems to have disappeared..." Richter finally announced before turning to look at the two hunters. "From what little I can gather everyone is here, yet Elmo..." Richters' ears went down, not in a way that indicated shame, rather one of deep thought.
Both men looked down the hall that Richter had been staring fixedly down before looking behind Richter as well. Neither side held any sign of the small boy, but again, the children in general tended to get lost the deeper they went into the Vatican. Which nearing the offices here 'was' pretty close to 'you will lose children' territory.
"He's probably somewhere," Christopher commented as he walked to the door across the hall and gave it a knock with his fist. His ears dipping down as he heard nothing, due to the fluff. "I mean you looking alone will have a less chance of success than all of us together. There's a reason Simon got outfitted after all, everyone knows child finding can take time." Christopher pointed out easily as Juste went to the next door and tried to push that open.
"That's the thing..." Richter replied, as he got back down and checked the next door. "He just... No I don't feel safe discussing that here." He finally answered earning a pair of looks from his fellow hunters.
Christopher and Juste exchanged looks before nodding, returning back to Richters' side. "Very well, we could certainly use the time to cross check what we've learned."
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Waking up felt off as Kazu sluggishly opened his eyes before reaching for his phone. The glare of the phone on his eyes caused him to flinch. But even as they watered at the brightness he could see there was no signs of a message waiting for him. Closing his eyes he couldn't hear any sounds from his apartment. It felt almost amazingly quiet actually, something he hadn't experienced since his birthday.
…
Too quiet...
Normally wouldn't Trevor and Sophia be talking to each other?
A frown crossed his face as Kazu finally sat up and looked about his bedroom. There was no sign of any of the spirits from his ancestors in the room. The orb he got from his mother was still there, working to provide a soft warm glow the way he left it the night before. As he moved about there was a wash of sudden pain that reminded him how he dealt with those 'eyes'...
And with that those memories came back leaving him shuddering and fighting to push those images away. "Trevor?"
"I'm here..." Trevor managed to slide open the door and poked his head into the room. His soft golden faux fur seemed a little less warm at that moment. There was no corresponding sign of his wife though and the quiet of the room began to eat away at Kazu.
For the Hunter, seeing Kazu looking about was a positive, at least, the boy had seen enough of Dracula's castle. The empty bottles of sake that he had dealt with during the night was proof enough of that. Not that he had finished his conversation with his wife before she was suddenly ripped away from him. Frustratingly enough, Trevors' plush paws could do nothing to keep his wife with him, and he was forced to watch as she was yanked out of the apartment through the wall.
The rest of the night had been filled with Trevor anxiously waiting for one of the others' to arrive and tell him what happened. That maybe something had drawn his wife away.
Minutes became hours...
Hours became dawn.
Leaving Trevor without hide nor hair of a single member of his clan, be they hunter, spouse or aid to visit. With the only logical explanation that he could come to being his own plush body. If the others had been taken, by whatever means. Perhaps in the end being sealed within this form had kept him grounded. But if that was the case...
Where was everyone...?
"Ok, so maybe I'm a bit off from the drinking but... did something happen last night?" Kazu asked as he walked over.
"You might want to wash up before I talk, its going to be a while..." Trevor instructed as he backed up from the door. His tone was quietly subdued, so whatever Kazu had missed had been enough to bother the former hunter.
Kazu blinked a few times before he looked around in mounting concern, noticing the lack of a few spirits and presence of a pair of old friends... "Where's Sophia?" He asked looking about in growing concern.
"Wash up, Kazuaki," Trevor repeated as he jumped up to the couch. "If you can reach Leon and Simon, please do so for when we talk."
A tone that Kazu had grown comfortably familiar with. That 'I know what's best trust me kid' tone he had used when Kazu had been small. "Yes sir," he answered before leaving to wash up.