[Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Novel Episode 6] The Door Opened by Price, the Demon Beneath the Shelves
The sound of paper scraping came first.
It reached him before he even pushed the door open. The wind of the Outer Wall tugged once more at the end of Alucard’s cloak, then withdrew, and from beyond it seeped the breath of a long library. Damp stone and night air were pierced by the thin, dry smells of leather, ink, and ancient paste. Dust settled across the back of the hand that held the handle. He did not push the door all the way open. He made only enough of a gap for one shoulder to pass through.
A book fell by itself inside.
Just before it struck the floor, the book spread its cover like wings. Its pages caught the air and fluttered upward to the height of Alucard’s face. He slipped his body aside and drew the Gladius in a short arc. The blade split the spine. Torn paper did not scream; it made the sound of crushed dry leaves, and black dust scattered from between the pages like blood.
Alucard stepped through that dust.
The Long Library was less a room than an abyss set upright. The shelves were not attached to the walls; they seemed to replace them. Ladders rose like pillars, and the tops of the high bookcases vanished into darkness beyond the candles’ reach. Near the ceiling, metal ornaments of uncertain purpose swayed with terrible slowness. The wind outside the castle walls could not reach this place, yet the books trembled faintly as though there were wind all the same.
When he set his foot down, dust on the floor drifted low. Alucard shortened his stride. Sound did not travel far here. Unlike the stone corridors, books, cloth, and leather swallowed noise. Silence itself came closer instead. Each breath seemed to lay a thin film of paper dust inside his lungs.
The first stairway was broad. Broad, but not safe. Piles of collapsed books cut off his sight on both sides, and below the rail-less edges, dark chambers opened their mouths. Somewhere on the lower floor, something scratched against the ground. It was not bone. It sounded like wet soil being dragged.
Alucard stopped halfway up the stairs.
Beneath the bookcase to his left, in the shadow, a low flower stalk swayed. Its color was too dark to be called a flower, and its movement too deliberate to be called a stem. Something like a tendril of flesh rose from between the stones and twitched toward Alucard’s ankle. Green saliva gathered in the mouthlike bloom.
When he stepped back, the saliva dropped onto the stair. The stone whitened and blistered where it landed. Poison. Alucard drew his left hand back with the hand axe and threw it low the instant the stalk lifted itself again. The axe flew close to the stair’s edge and struck beneath the bloom. The body lurched.
In that opening, he moved in. The Gladius was not a long sword. To cut deep, he had to enter. Before the poison could gather again, he lowered himself and severed the root. The tendril struck the floor several times before going slack. Paper dust fell over it and grew damp.
He picked up the axe and ran his fingers over the handle once. No poison clung to it.
The deeper he went, the narrower the paths between shelves became. Armless armor sprang from gaps in the bookcases, and squat little creatures leapt across heaps of books. They knew the rules of the Long Library. They did not charge from the front. First they dropped books, and while his eyes were drawn to the noise, they slipped in at his feet. Alucard did not raise his feet high. If he gave one of the small ones his ankle, the poison plants and flying books would come next.
He did not swing the sword in wide arcs. In a tight aisle, a broad cut would catch on the shelves. He cut with short turns of the wrist, stepped half a pace back, threw the hand axe, and entered again. He pressed his cloak beneath his elbow so it would not catch on the corners of the books. Alucard’s movement was less like battle than a careful dance performed by someone trying not to break the belongings of an old room.
But this room did not become gentle just because he was careful.
After the long stairs, the passage suddenly widened. A low desk stood in the center, and beyond it, a chair. The chair was far too large. The old man seated on it looked small by comparison, yet the air in the room seemed to hang from the tip of his finger.
The old man was reading.
Alucard stopped at the threshold. Candlelight flashed white along the edge of the old man’s spectacles. He did not immediately raise his head. Instead, he pressed one finger to the corner of the page so that the paper would not fold, with the practiced gesture of a man who had repeated it since long before memory.
“It has been a long time, old one.”
Only then did the old man’s eyes rise slowly. At first they were the eyes of someone looking at an intruder. Then, for an instant, they wavered.
“Ah. Lord Alucard.” The old man bowed slightly while remaining seated. His voice was courteous, but the calculation beneath that courtesy did not hide itself. “What brings you to this old man?”
Alucard walked to the front of the desk. One footfall sank into the carpet.
“I need your help.”
The old man’s finger stopped on the book. A candle trembled slightly. Somewhere in the room, a sleeping book changed its breath.
“Young master,” the old man said quietly, “I cannot aid one who has turned against the lord of this castle.”
Alucard looked at him. Not even an eyelid moved. But the hand that held the sword loosened a little. Silence was needed to distinguish an enemy to be cut down from a door that had to be passed.
“I will pay.”
The old man’s mouth rose very slowly. It was less a smile than the sound of an old lock meeting oil.
“In that case, the matter changes. Say what you require.”
The old man drew a small box from beneath the desk. Inside it, objects had been arranged with exact order: vials, an old map, scrolls marked with strange spells, weapons whose handles alone had been polished by use. But Alucard’s gaze stopped on a small jewel set apart from the others.
It did not shine brightly. Rather, it seemed to swallow light into itself. Within its transparent surface, a blue pattern lay submerged, and when he brought his hand close, that pattern turned with terrible slowness. The moment he saw it, Alucard remembered the blue-sealed doors that had blocked paths throughout the castle. Doors with no keyholes, doors that could not be broken by force. Doors that allowed the existence of a path, but not yet permission.
“That jewel.”
The old man reached for it as if he had been waiting. “It is an object that knows roads. Or, more precisely, the seals that bar those roads recognize this object.”
“The price?”
The old man named it. Briefly. Too easily.
Alucard untied the pouch at his waist. The coins he had gathered in the castle were cold and mismatched. Some belonged to old human kingdoms, and some had been carried like ornaments by the castle’s servants. He set them on the desk without counting. The old man counted them. His counting had not aged.
Each small meeting of metal split the library’s silence.
After confirming the last coin with his thumb, the old man handed him the jewel. When Alucard took it, the blue pattern gave a brief pulse beneath his palm. It did not pierce the skin. Yet somewhere inside his body, he felt a closed door turn to look at him.
“This castle is not kind,” the old man said. “But to one who knows the price, it will sometimes lend a road.”
Alucard placed the jewel inside his garment.
“Which side are you on?”
The old man’s smile stopped. Only for a moment. In that narrow interval, the order this castle had possessed long ago showed its face and vanished.
“I am the keeper of books.” The old man folded his fingers again. “Books record the names of the victorious and the fallen alike.”
“Then record this well.”
Alucard turned. The old man asked no more. Instead, just before Alucard stepped out through the door, a very low voice came from behind him.
“Take care in the lower shelves. They have not been quiet of late.”
Alucard did not stop.
Once he left the old man’s room, the smell of the library thickened again. For a brief while, the order at the old man’s fingertips had seemed to govern the place, but a few steps down were enough for the Long Library to reveal its own laws. Books have no master. Between the shelves live things that have starved as long as knowledge has been stored.
The path to the lower floor was darker than before. The shelves dropped lower and the ceiling pressed down, forcing Alucard to watch above his head more than once as he walked. Blue fire flickered between the pages. Spellbooks opened themselves and rose into the air. One of them did not fly straight at him, but circled from afar. A lure.
Alucard did not follow.
At that moment, the floor shook.
The sound had not come from the shelves, but from beneath the stone. Something heavy seemed to be pushing through the ground below. Then, in the distance, books fell all at once. Not dozens. Hundreds. The entire Long Library seemed to shudder once.
Alucard raised his sword. The short blade of the Gladius caught the candlelight and became a white line.
At the end of the passage there was a door. It was not closed. The darkness inside was simply so dense that he recognized it as an open doorway only after a moment. Above the frame, an angel had been carved, but its face had been scraped away. With only its wings remaining, it could not look down.
The smell changed as soon as he entered.
The scent of books withdrew, and wet soil and cold ash rose in its place. The battle chamber was a long rectangle. Bookcases ran along both walls, but the center had been left empty. No, not left empty. It felt as if something had moved there for a very long time, pushing the shelves back to make space for itself. Books, bones, and clods of soil lay mixed across the floor. The ceiling was high. Too high. A room favorable to an enemy that used the air.
Alucard did not go all the way to the center. He moved only three steps from the door, far enough from the left wall not to place his back against it. He left himself a path of retreat while avoiding a corner that might trap him.
Then, between the shelves near the ceiling, two red eyes lit.
The shadow descended first. When its wings opened, several candles went out at once. A short, twisted body. Long protruding arms. Dark heat moving beneath the skin. The Lesser Demon had been hanging upside down from the top of the shelves; now it bent its head and looked at Alucard. Its mouth opened, and within it boiled a sound that had failed to become human speech.
The first attack came from above.
It folded its wings and dropped. Not with the sound of falling stone, but with the sound of wet cloth tearing. Alucard started to roll left, then stopped. There was a clod of soil on the floor. He might slip. Instead, he stepped half a pace forward and lowered his body. The Lesser Demon’s claws passed over the back of his head and scraped the wall. A whole row of book spines burst open.
Alucard turned and cut at once. The edge of the blade touched the demon’s side. Shallow. The enemy did not retreat from the wound, but spread its wings and sprang upward. The sword had crossed flesh, but there had been no feeling of striking bone. It had twisted away in midair.
His first judgment had been late. This enemy was lighter than its size suggested, and it changed height faster than it changed distance.
The Lesser Demon opened both arms near the ceiling. Black sparks gathered between its fingers. Alucard, expecting poison breath or flame, began to move sideways. But the sparks did not fly at him. They fell to the floor.
The fallen sparks became bones.
First, a skeleton soldier rose onto one knee. Then a hazy shape drifted from between the shelves. It had neither flesh nor bones; it was a curse before it was a body. At the center of the floor, a mound of earth swelled and a mud creature lifted itself upright. What had been part of the ground only moments before had become an enemy.
Alucard did not grit his teeth. He merely adjusted his grip on the sword.
While it summoned, the Lesser Demon’s body stiffened briefly. But a thin membrane of darkness formed around it. Even if he cut now, the blow would not reach. The opening was not during the summoning, but in the first breath after the summoning ended.
The problem was surviving until that breath.
The skeleton came from the front. The mud creature was slow, but it blocked the path. The mist shape did not touch the floor, sliding toward Alucard at shoulder height. He did not meet the skeleton’s first slash with the Gladius. If he blocked it, the mist behind would reach him. Instead, he angled the blade and diverted the skeleton’s wrist, then kicked its ribs with his left foot. The bones collapsed, and a path opened.
The mist came close. If it touched him, it would become a curse. Alucard threw the hand axe. It did not completely cut the mist, but it tore the flow apart. In that single beat, he ducked beneath the mud creature’s slow arm and slipped past. The mud arm struck the bookcase and stuck there with a wet heaviness. Books made a soaked sound.
Poison poured from above.
The Lesser Demon was descending diagonally with its mouth open. Green breath swept the floor in a long line. Alucard tried to leap over the breath with his second jump. Yet though the ceiling was high, an iron ornament jutting from the end of a shelf blocked his path. His shoulder grazed the ornament, and his body fell sooner than he had expected. The edge of the poison burned the hem of the red cloth. An acrid smell rose.
A mistake. In this room, the upper space was not free. It was the demon’s road, and the trap of old ornaments.
As soon as he landed, he bent his knees and let the impact pass through him. The Lesser Demon seemed to have been waiting for that. It came down again with its claws spread. This time not from the front, but from behind. Alucard did not look back. He felt the movement of his cloak. The wind pressed at his back. He twisted right and thrust the sword behind him.
Blade met claw. A short metallic note. The demon’s claws were as hard as swords. He could not contest them with force. Alucard loosened his wrist and let the shock pass aside, then lowered himself further and slipped under the enemy’s arm. This time it was deep. The Gladius crossed the Lesser Demon’s belly.
The demon screamed for the first time.
The sound began as a high note no human throat could make, then sank at the end into a low roar like collapsing shelves. Its wings thrashed violently. Alucard stepped back and shielded his face with one arm. A storm of pages rose around him. His vision went white.
Within that whiteness, the second pattern began.
The Lesser Demon no longer summoned only from afar. After being wounded, it scattered sparks as it rose, and swung its claws as it descended. The gap between summoning and attack shortened. Before one skeleton had fully risen, a mud hand was already clutching the floor, and mist shapes seeped from behind the shelves to cut off Alucard’s retreat. The battle chamber was wide, but each enemy that came into being made it a little smaller.
Alucard abandoned the center. If he stayed there, they would come from every direction. He moved close to the right-side shelves. Not too close. If the shelves were at his back, he would have no space to evade the Lesser Demon’s dive. One step of space. Maintaining that gap, he gathered the enemies toward one direction.
The skeleton came first. He cut it down. The mist overlapped behind it. He did not retreat, but recovered the hand axe and threw it immediately. While the axe tore through the mist, the mud creature stretched out an arm. Alucard stepped on that arm. The mud tried to seize his ankle, but he escaped with the second jump. This time he did not rise high. Only the height of a man. Low enough to avoid the iron ornaments. Folding his body in the air, he fell and drove his sword into the mud creature’s head.
The floor splashed.
And above.
The Lesser Demon always aimed for the moment after Alucard landed. It was repetition. At first, it had been a threat. By the third time, it had become a promise. The enemy waited for the instant when Alucard’s feet touched the ground and his knees bent. That was when it tried to tear his back or shoulder with its claws.
Then the opening would appear there as well.
Alucard deliberately delayed his evasion of the next mud creature’s arm. His toes touched the mud. A heavy sensation caught his ankle. The Lesser Demon responded at once. The sound of wings folding at the ceiling. The air being pulled into a single point. Alucard lowered his weight, pretending to be trapped. The enemy descended faster.
Just before the claws reached him, he threw the hand axe upward with his left hand.
The axe had not been meant to strike the demon. Its blade hit an ornament in the ceiling and ricocheted. The metallic note tore through the room. The Lesser Demon’s gaze wavered for an instant. In that tiny moment, Alucard cut the mud holding his ankle with the tip of his sword and slipped aside. The demon’s claws gouged the place where he had been standing.
Landing.
An opening.
The Lesser Demon’s wings had not yet fully spread. Alucard entered. His cloak followed half a beat late. The Gladius was short, and therefore quick. He slipped inside the demon’s arms, opened its chest with the first cut, and split the base of its throat with the second. When the demon tried to fly upward, he reached out and seized its coarse fur.
Its skin was hot. His palm felt as though it were burning.
Alucard did not let go.
He dragged the demon to the floor and pinned it with his knee. Poisonous breath boiled again in the Lesser Demon’s mouth. Too close. There was no distance in which to dodge. Alucard turned his head aside and drove the sword upward from below.
The poison never came.
Black blood overflowed from inside the demon’s throat first. Its wings thrashed once, violently. The surrounding books opened and closed all at once, as though the room itself had blinked.
The Lesser Demon scraped at the floor. Its claws carved into the stone and raised white powder. The summoned skeleton collapsed like a puppet with severed strings, and the mist shape vanished like smoke touched by flame. The mud creature forgot the form of its own body and sank back into a mound of soil.
The last thing remaining was the wings. The demon’s wings trembled a few times, then slowly folded. Only the sound of falling paper remained in the room.
Alucard drew out the sword. Blood did not cling long to the blade. It slid down like darkness and fell to the floor. He looked at his palm. The place where he had gripped the demon’s fur had reddened. When he clenched and opened his hand once, the pain rose late.
A low sound came from the left wall of the battle chamber.
The sound of a hidden mechanism releasing. One bookcase moved very slowly aside, revealing a passage behind it. At the same time, from the center of the floor near where the demon had fallen, a small light rose. It was neither blood nor flame. It was a vessel-like glow of life. Alucard stood before it. The light seeped into his body and cooled the edges of his wounds. His breath deepened slightly. Yet the fatigue did not vanish. His surviving body had merely grown a little broader for a moment.
He followed the passage.
Beyond the battle chamber, it was unexpectedly quiet. The shelves were orderly again, and the floor was almost clean. But that peace did not last. Soon the path ended before a narrow set of bars. Beyond them, another room clearly existed. A faint blue energy moved inside. A shadow like a bat’s wing flickered briefly across the ceiling and vanished.
Alucard approached the bars and reached out. Cold air flowed between his fingers. The iron bars were too close together. A human body could not pass through, and even a sword could not properly enter. They were too old and too strong to be broken by force.
It was not a door, but a gap.
He did not need to recall the low opening he had passed earlier. The castle had already been repeating the same statement in several forms. Some paths demanded a higher body. Some demanded a lighter one. Some opened for a price, and others waited for a transformation whose name he did not yet know.
Alucard withdrew his hand.
The Jewel of Open lay faintly cold within his garment. This jewel was not the answer to these bars. But other doors would now recognize him. Doors sealed in blue. Closed entrances he had remembered in passing. The cold light of the Marble Gallery, the blocked passage leading deeper into the castle, the air that climbed upward.
Behind him, the Long Library turned another page.
Whether it came from the old man’s room, from the books that still lived, or from the last tremor left behind by the dead demon, he could not tell. Alucard sheathed his sword and turned back. A scorched mark from the poison remained at the end of his cloak. He did not brush it away.
The way back was quieter than the way in. The books still watched him, but they did not rush him as before. Or perhaps they were only choosing the moment to do so. The servants of this castle do not vanish unless their master changes. Defeating the demon of one room does not make a library safe.
When he passed the old man’s room, the faint sound of coins touching came from within. Alucard did not open the door. The old man did not call to him. The transaction between them was done. But the end of a transaction does not mean the debt disappears. In this castle, what is bought for a price will one day return with another price attached.
As he descended the stairs, he felt again the trace of the night air that entered from the Outer Wall. Another scent mingled with that cold current. Incense. Extinguished candles, damp stone, and the lingering echo of a cold hymn caught beneath a high ceiling.
Alucard stopped.
Behind the smell of the Long Library’s paper, from somewhere far away, came the sound of wings folding and spreading. It was not the sound of a bookcase shifting. It was larger, and it belonged to a higher place. The wind descending from the castle’s upper reaches made the gap in the door sing faintly.
He pressed one hand to the blue jewel within his garment.
Somewhere, a closed door was quietly waiting for him.
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