[Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Novel — Episode 17] Where the Sky Became the Floor
When Alucard placed his first foot upon the black path, his blood fell upward.
A dark red drop seeped from the left arm that had been caught in Richter’s whip. It gathered at the edge of his glove but did not fall beneath his feet. Instead, it brushed through his silver hair and drifted toward the castle suspended above him.
He followed it with his eyes.
The blood touched the point of an inverted spire. The stone drank it like dry soil. Somewhere far away, a heart beat once.
Thud.
His father’s castle had recognized him.
Behind him came the sound of Maria pulling Richter’s arm over her shoulder. He still could not stand without help. The scrape of a chain over stone and their uneven breathing reached Alucard through the black wind.
He did not look back.
If he turned, he felt he would have to answer Maria’s final words.
Come back.
He had made no promise. Promises belonged to those who knew how they might return alive. Alucard knew only that Shaft was somewhere inside the castle above and that his father’s resurrection had not yet been stopped.
He took a second step.
The black path was not made of stone. It trembled thinly beneath his boots, while clouds moved in two opposing directions below it. The darkness stretched between the summits of the two castles resembled less a bridge than the boundary where two separate falls collided.
On the third step, the sole of his boot left the path.
Alucard did not fall downward.
His body tipped sideways. Above and below exchanged places and pulled at his entrails. The weight of the Spike Breaker vanished from his shoulders, then returned from somewhere over his head. He reached for the black path, but his fingers closed on empty air.
The Castle Keep below receded beneath his feet.
The spires of the inverted castle approached from above.
No.
He was falling toward them.
Alucard tried to become a bat. His shoulder blades folded inward and his cloak spread into wings, but direction overturned again during the transformation. His smaller body did not know where to spread its wings. One caught the wind of the lower castle while the other was pulled by the gravity above.
His body shook between the two worlds as though it might be torn apart.
He stopped beating his wings.
Rather than trying to fly, he accepted the fall.
He decided that the place his blood had gone would be below.
At that moment, the gravity of the inverted castle claimed him.
Alucard fell toward the spire with his black wings folded. An instant before striking the stone, he dissolved into mist. Black vapor flowed around the pointed roof and passed between the tiles. It gathered once more into human form upon a broad stone balcony.
His knee struck the ground.
He steadied himself with one hand and waited for his breathing to slow.
The earth was above him.
The lower castle hung upside down beneath the clouds. The summit where Maria and Richter had stood now appeared to be its lowest point. He could no longer see them. Even the black path between the castles was closing like a thin scar.
Before the last opening vanished, a small light trembled in the castle below.
It might have been Maria’s lamp or the remnant of holy fire upon Richter’s whip.
Then the light was severed.
Alucard rose.
The balcony railing stood above his head. Suspended too high to reach, it could protect nothing. The stone surface that had been a ceiling in the lower castle was now the ground beneath his feet. A door lay against the upper wall instead of before him.
Every promise made by architecture had become a betrayal.
Stairs led those who climbed them toward open air. Windows no longer admitted light but opened onto the sky below. Candle wax rose from its flames and gathered on the ceiling. Old trails of blood climbed the walls and hardened before reaching their destination.
Yet their shapes were not what troubled him.
Alucard knew this place.
The stone statue before him hung with its head pointing downward, but even the scars on its armor matched those in the lower castle. Behind the third pillar was the crack he remembered touching as he passed. Inside a collapsed wall, the mark left by Mormegil ran in the opposite direction.
But none of those wounds had been made by him.
It seemed the wall here had been cut before he ever swung his sword in the castle below.
Alucard ran his fingers over the mark.
A faint vibration answered from within the stone.
This castle was not a mirror reflecting the one beneath it. It was a place that made it impossible to know which castle had been wounded first. If memory could not prove the original, then only the sensation beneath his feet remained.
He withdrew his hand.
Stone dust spilled from beneath his boots into the sky below. Alucard lowered his center of gravity and moved one step at a time. A broad ceiling had become a narrow road. The inner curve of an arch now served as a bridge across an abyss.
The first door was above him.
He jumped with the power of the Leap Stone and caught the frame. As he pulled himself upward, the door opened inward. A passage he had crossed without effort below now tried to drop him into the void beneath his feet.
Alucard braced one knee against the door and looked into the corridor.
He heard the mechanism of a clock.
Its rhythm was wrong.
Tick.
A long silence.
Tick.
The intervals resembled a heart that had stopped and was being forced to beat again.
The Reverse Clock Tower.
He moved toward the sound.
---
There was no wind on the road to the clock tower.
Yet strips of cloth hanging from the walls streamed in one direction. Every one leaned away from the place Alucard had to go. Something unseen was drawing the air from the corridor.
When he stopped, the cloth became still.
He took another step, and the strips pulled taut.
A low beating of wings came from ahead.
Whump.
A single stroke drove the dust of the corridor into Alucard’s face.
He removed the Holy Glasses and put them away. There was no illusion of Shaft to see, and frost had begun gathering around the edges of the lenses. The darkness here had to be read by skin and hearing before any instrument could reveal it.
The door at the end of the corridor stood open.
Alucard remembered the chamber.
It was where he had fought Karasuman in the castle below, where ravens had gathered against the ceiling like a storm cloud and the winged demon had plunged through their flock.
Here, the ceiling lay beneath his feet.
Pillars extended into the sky below. A vast clock face stared upward from the bottom of the chamber. The broken chandelier had fallen upward and taken root in the stone like a black tree. Tall windows that once occupied the walls now opened beneath Alucard’s feet, and beyond them clouds flowed without moonlight.
Nothing stood at the center of the room.
Alucard did not cross the threshold.
There was no dust on the floor. Rather, the dust had been driven from the center and gathered beneath the walls. Something enormous had repeatedly spread its wings in the same place.
Without raising his head, he looked toward the glass of a window below.
A shadow appeared in its reflection.
It was far larger than his own.
Two black wings slowly opened above the doorway.
Darkwing Bat clung beyond the frame to the stone that would have been the ceiling in the lower castle. Its body alone was the size of two men, and its wings were broad enough to cover half the chamber. Dark red veins moved beneath the thin membranes. Its ears rose like a torn crown. Layers of dried blood covered the fangs protruding between its lips.
It did not hang as Alucard would have hung.
It belonged to the gravity of this castle.
What Alucard called the floor was also the floor to the creature. Yet it remained with its back against the stone as though it obeyed another direction entirely.
A pair of red eyes opened.
Darkwing Bat struck the air once with its wings.
The air became a wall.
Alucard spread his feet and lowered his body. He expected the weight of the Spike Breaker to hold him in place.
He was wrong.
The gust did not strike the armor. It lifted the air beneath it. Alucard’s boots left the ground, and his body flew backward into a pillar beside the door. The breastplate rang. The left plate, already cracked during the battle with Richter, pressed into his ribs.
The creature followed at once.
Its folded body crossed the chamber. The first bite sought Alucard’s throat. He caught its jaws with the flat of Mormegil between them.
The jaws closed.
The sword bent.
Darkwing Bat did not retreat. It twisted its head. The second bite came for Alucard’s left shoulder. He pushed its lower jaw aside with his elbow. The fangs caught only his torn cloak.
The third attack was faster.
The beast extended its neck and bit into his side. One fang entered between the plates of the Spike Breaker. Cold saliva touched the wound.
Alucard twisted Mormegil and forced the jaws apart. The bloodstained fang slid free. He swung his sword horizontally, but the creature had already beaten its wings and retreated to the center of the chamber.
It had bitten three times.
Always three.
The first sought the throat, the second the weapon arm, and the third the body left open by the defense. It appeared to be an animal maddened by hunger, yet there was an order to its violence. It did not charge merely to feed. It moved its prey and opened a chosen place for the final wound.
Alucard pressed one hand against his side.
Blood welled between his fingers. As its scent spread, Darkwing Bat turned its ears toward him.
It saw him more clearly with its ears than with its eyes.
Alucard scraped the point of Mormegil across the stone.
Clang.
The metallic note rebounded from a pillar on the left.
The creature turned toward the sound.
Alucard leapt in the opposite direction. The Leap Stone carried him one step higher through the air. The black blade cut a long tear through the membrane of the right wing.
Blood poured out.
It did not fall. Dark red droplets flew toward the ceiling and clung to the gears above. The teeth received the blood and began to move slowly.
Tick.
The clock sounded once.
Darkwing Bat screamed.
It folded the wounded wing and wrapped the other around its body. Becoming a vast black cone, it began to spin in the air.
The first rotation was slow.
On the second, the air coiled into a spiral.
At the third, the creature vanished.
Alucard ducked by instinct.
The spinning beast passed over his head and tore through a pillar. Stone erupted from the center. Fragments were seized by the inverted gravity and poured upward.
Before reaching the opposite wall, the creature changed direction.
It charged again.
Alucard became mist. The spinning wings cut through the vapor, but the spiral wake pulled at his scattered body. Black mist was drawn into the creature’s rotation.
His form began to collapse.
Hands, face, and cloak tried to return from different directions. Alucard could not find the floor. The two gravities he had felt while crossing between the castles seemed to divide his body again.
Darkwing Bat prepared a third charge.
Alucard restored only his right hand and caught a crack in the floor. Then he called back his arm and shoulder, forcing the scattered mist to gather inside the armor. The spinning roar approached before his face had completely returned.
He threw himself aside.
The black cone grazed his left arm. The shoulder plate of the Spike Breaker tore loose and flew away. It shattered a window and disappeared into the sky below.
Alucard landed on one knee.
Darkwing Bat opened its wings at the center of the chamber. The wound in its right membrane had widened. It could no longer remain level. To correct its tilted body, it had to beat the undamaged wing with greater force.
The pattern changed.
Its first gusts had been broad and even. Now twisted wind surged from one side to the other. Lowering his body was no longer enough. The first wave swept Alucard’s legs aside, while the second drove his upper body in the opposite direction.
The creature descended through the opening.
The first bite.
Alucard moved his throat aside.
The second bite.
He drew back his sword hand.
The third came for his side.
This time he did not evade it.
Alucard offered the wounded side of his body. The fang entered the same place again. Pain erased his sight in white.
He seized the creature by the back of its neck.
Darkwing Bat tried to open its jaws, but Alucard did not release it. At this distance, he saw what had been hidden. Beneath the black hair at the center of its chest was a circular scar, as though someone had pressed a red-hot ring into its flesh.
Another heartbeat sounded below the scar.
It did not match the creature’s heart.
Thud.
A moment later, the beast’s heart followed.
Thud.
Darkwing Bat was not guarding the ring.
The ring was holding the creature captive.
Alucard did not drive Mormegil into its chest. He inserted the point along the edge of the circular scar.
Darkwing Bat thrashed and opened its wings. The gust lifted both of them. The floor withdrew, and the windows beneath them drew closer. Beyond the broken glass waited only endless night.
The creature began to spin.
If it completed its charge at this distance, Alucard’s body would be twisted apart with its own.
He pushed the sword deeper.
Metal scraped beneath the scar.
Darkwing Bat screamed. Its undamaged wing struck Alucard’s back again and again. His ribs shook. Strength began to leave his fingers.
Alucard looked into its eyes.
There was neither hunger nor rage in them.
They were the eyes of an animal exhausted by endless flight.
It, too, had never chosen the direction of this castle. It had merely believed that the heartbeat of the ring was below and circled it without end.
Alucard twisted Mormegil sideways.
The flesh beneath the black hair opened.
A golden edge appeared.
The instant the ring came free of its chest, the second heartbeat ceased.
Darkwing Bat stopped spinning.
Its enormous body became weightless. Strength left its wings, and the red light faded from its eyes. Still holding the ring, Alucard fell with the creature.
Before striking the ground, he became a bat and slipped away.
Darkwing Bat never reached the stone.
Its body dissolved into black ash in midair. The wings collapsed first, followed by the bones and fangs. The ash followed the inverted gravity to the ceiling and settled between gears and teeth.
Only a fragment of torn wing membrane remained.
When that, too, became dust, silence returned to the clock tower.
Tick.
Once.
This time there was no long silence.
Tick.
The stopped clock recovered a steady pulse.
Alucard returned to human form and stood upon the floor. Without its left shoulder plate, the Spike Breaker hung unevenly. Blood ran from the wound in his side, and only one half of his cloak remained against his back.
He opened his right hand.
A dark red stain had entered the golden ring. It bore no jewel. There was no ancient inscription inside it, yet a name could be felt within the metal itself.
Vlad.
A remnant of the name his father had carried as a man.
Alucard did not put the ring on his finger.
He held it upon his palm and looked at it.
This was no ornament. Dracula’s power and memory had been severed and sealed within the small circle. It was a relic made so that the pieces would never forget the road back after the complete body had vanished.
The Ring of Vlad.
When Alucard closed his hand around it, four more heartbeats sounded inside his mind.
One came from a place where water gathered in the depths.
One from beyond a wall of stone and stitched flesh.
One from a chapel where prayers were spoken backward.
The final one beat in darkness older than any cavern, accompanied by the sound of small scythes striking together.
All four directions pointed toward the heart of the castle.
Alucard opened his hand.
The ring had fallen silent again, but a black circle remained upon his palm. It was a mark no blood could wash away.
His father had not yet returned.
But the scattered pieces were already calling to one another.
Alucard placed the Ring of Vlad inside his coat. The Gold Ring and Silver Ring gave a faint chime beside it, but Vlad’s ring did not answer.
The door on the opposite side of the chamber opened.
Beyond it moved inverted stairs and countless gears. Deeper within came the sound of water flowing along a ceiling.
Alucard wiped the blood from Mormegil. New wounds lay over the holy burns on his left arm, but his fingers still moved.
He crossed the threshold.
Behind him, the final ashes of the bat were drawn between the gears.
The clock continued to run backward.
But the blood inside the ring was beating forward.
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