Castlevania: Aria of the Ascending Soul

Written By: Lady Lunar Phoenix

Beta By: Lady Lunar Phoenix

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"Ok, so for example," Mathias clicked on a button on the small black thing that caused the screen to change, removing a good deal of dots from the map. "As you can see all these dots took place on the same day, and there are only a few alterations among the number of them."

"All reversed," Leon noted while Mathias slid the books over for Leon to sit back down on.

"That's correct, now this is the September map and you can see that it doesn't change from the July or August maps save that instead of being performed on a new moon it was done on a full one. October is the same being done on the full moon, which is also important because New Moons are for banishing things if you're going completely pagan, while Full is for completion of progress. 'If' you're pagan," Mathias continued earning an ear twitch from Leon.

"Matters? How?"

"You'll see in the coming maps, but suffice it to say, the local authorities seemed to have fixated on Pagan groups in the areas. Which works very nicely for these cults because it shifts the focus from them to another group. You see while we may 'affectionately' call Yoko's blood line 'witches' that's not a real proper term for them. 'Witches' were nothing more than village healers, midwives, the term 'Witch' became a collective catch phrase for women who defied the Church by learning when they were meant to be kept dumb." Mathias gave a flat sigh and his eyes narrowed on the screen, his reflection showing clouds of displeasure rolling in. "Why does the phrase 'Burn the witch' make me so angry..." he grumbled to himself.

"Lady Yoko?" Leon asked, his voice box warbled in an attempt to add inflection to his words.

"I think the women in her clan were just called 'witches' as an insult, like how the words 'Pagan' or 'Heathen' are today. Just as those labels being used to imply uneducated, poor folk, it became adopted as a label to be worn with pride. Until the Burning times at least."

Leon noticed the small shift in awareness that Mathias now carried, it was similar to the expressions he wore back in their time. Yet now there was this sort of self reflection, a mind digging through the past to help explain the present and finding... things...

"So they get it into their heads to try to summon me using Black Masses intentions while using Pagan circle calling. New Moons releases the souls they have sent and they've occasionally come back to talk to me..." Mathias stated, clicking past December into January. "They had some interesting things to say as well. There were those who wanted revenge yes, but there were those who had incredible hearts that could see past their own desires..."

"Stop..." Leon cocked his head to the side expressing his concern as his ears wiggled. He stood from his seat and walked to the screen, placing his paw against the smooth surface. He was no master of any arcane art, even this machine was magical to him. Above his head he could see Mathias' approving pair of eyes focus on him. Granting him this moment to assess the change in the map as they came before him. "Points... changed sharply..."

"Very good," Mathias praised warmly, "the police in all those regions thought that the 'Pagan Groups' were merely moving their locations. Because they don't understand magic or ritual they believe that these people are just changing to avoid capture. They picked up that if they found 'one' sacrifice location they could expect where the other locations were via this pattern."

"A few investigations show some intelligence as well, suggesting that this isn't a 'Pagan Group' doing this but a death cult or such. Yet..." Mathias resumed clicking through the months, restoring all the points. "It is a theory that has thrown the communities into a bit of a problem, they've been actively pursuing anyone Pagan as being a member. This theory would put everyone back to the start and we're talking almost a years worth of research to start over from. Not to mention all the dead and buried bodies."

Leon frowned as he looked from location to location, there was no pattern that he could find, each group felt chaotic. The 'point' that Mathias spoke of that indicated the intentions of the circle looked wildly out of swing.

Until something clicked.

So long as Leon saw Mathias as a burden or a charge, something that was a threat and dangerous what he was being shown was confusing. But slipping back to those old days when Mathias's mind had been sound and healthy. Slipping back into the past when he could trust that Mathias was showing him something important brought that back into focus. Mathias' love of making Leon have to figure things out on his own had been a valuable asset over time.

"Pointing?"

"Yes, Leon, wonderful," Mathias replied. Any hint of Spanish or Japanese was gone, and Leon heard his own native tongue for the first time since arriving in this modern world. Mathias clicked on a few other things on screen, removing the months of lost girls and boys to human sacrifice. Lines connected the points and instead of a pentagram they formed short blunt arrows.

The room felt heavy, as each of the recent arrows started to project a line from their points outwards towards Europe. Perhaps these machines weren't 'magic', yet for Leon, what other term could describe a box that could show the world? He had seen images of Japan on items through out his time in the shrine, used as symbols of national pride. So he knew it was a simple series islands that made the nation he found himself living on.

Yet the map before him, showing him the 'world', would have been breath taking if he could breath. The world was massive with so much land for people to live on, so much so that on the grand scale the number of dots that had been shown was deceptively minuscule. For while they were only a few deaths compared to the world, what these cultists were trying for could invert the numbers sharply between those who lived and those who died.

Millions dead sounded like something that Death would appreciate or want to hurry the process for. At one time mass exterminations would be a promise if Mathias returned to the war he had launched against humanity as a whole. Only given what Mathias had confessed to just today, Leon felt that even if Mathias was to return to being a vampire he wouldn't resume the war. He'd probably just find a way back into the Castle and abandon the world to its own self destructive fate.

So was it possible that these spirits were arriving because of Death? Death was supposed to ferry the souls, so how was it possible that Death would allow these souls to end up speaking to Mathias? Unless it was intentional. If It could not present itself formally before Its master then it would send messages in a bottle. Only apparently that was either not good enough or fast enough and bringing in Leon was now an effort to make the messages clearer.

A message that was very clear to Leon as he stared at the clear glass screen that showed a map before his own fake glass eyes. They were crisscrossing over a particular area on the map, distant from where Leon once lived. As he slid his paw to the spot on the map, Mathias clicked another button and revealed yet another map. The bright, various colors used to denote countries was replaced with a field of vivid nature that removed the lines and colors that dictated nations and countries. Revealing only nature and its borders in the form of water and rivers.

The lines returned, crossing over oceans and rivers, mountains, plains lines created by this computer to reflect that what he saw with the other map was still in effect. They crossed over a large swath of land that held a lake in it, vivid green with only one long road of gray that slithered through the trees and land towards it.

"I'm willing to put money on that the Castle was originally located there," Mathias casually cracked the growing silence between them.

"Summon Castle?" Leon asked, his static voice box giving a slight warble of concern.

"Possibly yes, they apparently are trying to summon the Castle out of the eclipse, and I know that Vampire Killer isn't there anymore. Two of the seals are down with the seal on the Shrine itself in tatters, yet currently on the mend. As I said before not all the spirits were vengeful, some where actually informative. So apparently these cults want to bring the Castle here in hopes that its presence might be help in reverting me to a more violent tendency." Mathias explained, as he sank back into the seat, crossing his arms in his displeasure.

"See one of those spirits happened to have heard a conversation on her way to the afterlife..."

"You must be Dracula... funny, I always assumed you were supposed to be European... well... and older," the spirit was doe eyed, her face framed in the long flowing cut associated with beauty in her native country. She was a young slip of a girl her skin naturally tanned brought out the beautiful pink sari she wore.

Soma shrugged, the weight of another death because of him settling itself over his shoulders with all the others that he had met like her. Hovering between the living world and death, her hair flowed about her face as though she was in a gentle stream. Her sari could have been a mermaids' fins as they fluttered in the same way flowing easily, unlike all the angry children. Hair and clothes whipping about in a storm of rage.

"Well, I heard something funny before I died, I don't know if it will help you any. Because apparently they killed me to reach you?" Her young voice was a pleasant mixture of informative and reflective each sentence inspiring either one or the other tones.

"Sadly yeah, they are trying to figure out if I'm alive or not, I'm sorry that they cut your life so short," Soma apologized as he had for every other calm soul that he had encountered. "Do you have any family that you want me to contact?"

"No, I'm ok with this really! Kadru was taken and killed by them, and so long as we can be together I'm fine." She attempted to reassure Soma with her words though the thought that she knew and was involved with who had also been murdered didn't help. "Anyways, I thought you might want to know that they were talking about how this thing they're doing isn't working."

She cocked her head to the side, her eyes questioning her memories as though she was seeking something in her recent memories. But given her race, it was more than likely she wasn't used to language barriers being broken via death.

"You're dead and part of being dead is that it removes language restrictions. So please don't feel you have to translate anything for me to understand," Soma offered politely as he stood before her.

"Oh, well alright. Ahh one was an ugly, ugly, man in very fancy robes, he was saying that you were alive and that the rituals should stop focusing on you." Her head cocked to the side in quiet reflection as she pondered over her memories before giving a slight shrug. "I heard them mention..." She stumbled to a stop her brows furrowed in concentration before she was forced to shake her head. "I'm sorry, I know that you said that there's no language barriers. But they started using words I didn't understand back when I was alive. I'm afraid I don't know how to speak what they said next..."

She crossed her arms in frustration as she tried to think, though that she picked up as much as she did was admirable.

"Stop sacrifices?" Leon clarified to the best of his ability while using the barest of words. Sacrifices of human life was already sickening, the numbers while small in scale to the rest of humanity was still numbers. The only thing darker that crossed his mind was a single fear that sent a chill up his non existent spine. 'Stop focusing on you' the young maiden had said, yet they didn't 'have' to focus on the Castle. It was certainly a reasonable focus and a rational direction to shift their focus onto obviously so they did.

Only Alucard was missing still and despite how badly Leon wanted the sacrifices to have ended to stave off the worse scenario in his mind. One scenario remained.

"No, I wish; these changes happened after Arikado had left to investigate them. The sacrifices have continued unchanged since that nice girl showed up last month," Mathias explained, the weight of the conversation finally bringing his voice down from any youthful adult tone. "Yet the fact that someone was able to merely say 'Oh its not working, he's alive' and have these cults just accept that? If they have, and that might be the case. I find it worrisome that whoever this 'ugly person in nice robes' is, has the type of knowledge and respect as to get these cults to listen to him. Simply put, there should be 'no' solid, enthroned leaders for either cults since I killed them all. This man has to be an outsider, and his robes make me worry that he's from the Church."

Leon couldn't turn around fast enough, his clumsy paws nearly had him fall on his face in his attempt to stop looking at Mathias through a mere reflection and directly at the man himself. "Why?" It was a leap of logic to accuse the 'church' of working with the cults. A thought process that most would scoff at and think Mathias gone mad. Save that if Leon allowed himself to listen to the former tactician as he used to, it was a statement with a meaning.

"She was only one of the few who were able to take note of her environment when she was sacrificed. But put that aside, the Church is the 'only' organization that knows about me for who I was, and wears robes of any sort. I'm not saying its the Pope, far from it, but its not as though the church is a pure institution. You just haven't been around for some of their more... lets call them 'colorful' transgressions over there years." Mathias explained patiently as he reclined in his chair, his expression surprisingly rueful for the topic at hand.

"Tell Lady..." Leon began only to have Mathias shake his head against the suggestion, the rueful expression mingled with a growing apologetic one.

"Yoko? No... I can't tell her any of this... I can't tell anyone alive of this, which I guess is why I wanted to tell you." Mathias began, picking Leon up without permission so he could settle the lion onto the book properly. "I suppose you haven't been around her long enough to know that Yoko has a reputation for... 'talking'... More than she should in fact."

Leon watched as Mathias looked away inwardly towards a memory before his lips twitched into a smile before he began laughing softly. "You've met Aluca- , I mean, Genya... Arikado, right?" His voice was pitched high, blending Spanish and Japanese, sounding decidedly feminine. Decidedly 'Yoko' in a way that indicated he was quoting her in a portion of a memory.

"I'm not stupid Leon, she meant to say another name, he's not Japanese yet uses a Japanese name while he works for the Japanese government. In a division that doesn't justify a non Japanese person working there? No, its clear that she meant to his real identity and stumbled over that when we first met. Now imagine if I told her and she blurts out the information to the ears of the wrong church member?"

"Kill her?" Leon hated even having to suggest those words. Mathias was too calm, the type of calm that came from having thought through all the angles. Yet if Mathias couldn't find a way out of the situation, or there simply lacked one...

"No, killing would be too easy, clean even. Send her off to a hot bed of trouble on her own and it takes only supposed 'random chance' for her to be killed. I don't think whoever started this particular game is that crass." Mathias noted as he looked around the room carelessly, eyes observing any given object for a moment to confirm its location. Then drifting off again to another object with such casual indifference. While letting the weight of what he said press down on Leon with its invisible force.

"Then what?" Leon asked, needing to be guided. He was new in this form and isolated from the other members of his family. If they knew anything, it wasn't being shared with... That's when it hit him, an invisible punch to the face that sent him falling onto his back as he realized the 'real' reason why Mathias brought him here.

It wasn't so that he could be 'rescued' from dress up with the Lady Lolitas, or at least not entirely. No; there was a way for Mathias to leave directly from here and arrive at the Vatican without traveling. There was no reason to think that Leon himself couldn't use it, hence why he was here. Mathias wanted Leon to spy on the Church for him!

"Yoko is a 'witch nun' meaning that while yes she has magic as a witch, she's a nun and therefore expected to never have kids. A nice tidy way to sterilize the clan without raising suspicions is to let nature take its course. Let her go about trying to help with hunts, waste her youth fighting and sooner or later something is going to off her for them. There's simply no rush in the matter," Mathias explained, a knowing smile on his face as he watched Leon fall over as realizations started to hit the plushy hunter.