[Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Novel Episode 14] The Dream That Stole His Mother’s Voice
The scent of flowers was rotting inside the smell of water.
Alucard landed on a wet stone pillar. Before the sole of his boot could slip, he lowered his ankle, and with his left hand he gathered the end of his cloak just before it touched the water. The air of the Underground Caverns felt new, though he had passed through it before. The water was as dark and cold as it had been, yet now that cold could no longer drive him away. The Holy Symbol lay low inside him like a subdued light, and the current parted around his ankles instead of seizing them.
The grinding of the upper castle’s gears had died before it could reach this place. In its place were the sound of droplets falling from the cavern ceiling, the distant breathing of water, and a low resonance rising from hollow spaces beneath the floor. The castle chewed time in its heights and soaked memory in its depths. Alucard had passed between the two.
He set his right hand on the hilt of the Gladius.
The wounds left by the Clock Tower had not fully closed. The shoulder scraped by Karasuman’s feathers burned briefly whenever the cloak brushed over it, and the torn surface of the Walk Armor returned a dull vibration toward his chest with every step. The light of life kept breath moving through him, but it did not erase the fact that the wounds had been there. Alucard did not resent that. Pain remembered by the body was sometimes more accurate than a map.
A vertical passage opened downward through the cave.
Once, it had been a fall. Now, it was a descent. He stood at the edge of the ledge and looked below. Narrow pillars rose above the water, and Spear Guards patrolled slowly between them. Whenever their spearheads reflected in the water, silver lines trembled across the surface. They did not look up. The castle’s soldiers usually guarded only the height assigned to them. But the moment Alucard left the ledge, the nearest one raised its head.
The spear came.
It had not been thrown. It was thrust upward, the long shaft measuring the line of his fall from below. Alucard folded his body in midair. Human shoulders shrank, and the cloak became wings. The Soul of Bat made him light. The spearhead pierced the space where he had been, and the small body of the bat slipped down beside the shaft.
He returned to human form behind the soldier’s back.
The Gladius moved briefly. The back of the neck, beneath the helmet’s joint. The spear soldier dropped to one knee without making a sound. A second Spear Guard turned. Alucard saw the time it took to pull the spear back. A long weapon owns distance, but in the moment of recovery it binds its master. He stepped inside. Before the spearhead could graze his side, the tip of his sword cut the inside of the elbow. Metal and bone shook together, and the spear fell into the water.
The third stood across the water.
That soldier did not approach. It lowered the spearhead and waited. Alucard did not leap across. Water flowed between the narrow stone pillars, and beneath it lay a depth he could not see. He took the body of a bat and flew low. The current pushed up against the air under his wings. It was still an unfamiliar power. Air above water was heavier than air beside a wall, and the damp rising from below slowed each beat of his wings.
The soldier thrust.
Alucard spat the Fire of Bat in a short burst. The fireball did not fly straight. It wavered as it fed on the dampness, brushing past the side of the soldier’s helmet. Still, it was enough. The enemy’s sight was bound for a moment to the flame. In that opening, Alucard returned to human form, set one foot on a stone pillar, and used the second beat of the Leap Stone to pass over the enemy’s head. The Gladius split the helmet from behind.
The water soon became quiet again.
He shook his sword. Drops of water and dark blood fell together. The moss on the cavern wall did not stir even at that sound.
To the upper right was a crevice he had not been able to reach before.
A narrow entrance set between two stone walls. A human jump was not enough, and mist would have been too uncertain to steer. Now he could fly. Alucard looked at the entrance for a moment. The flower scent that had drifted down on the wind at the end of the last passage was coming from there. It was not a fragrance that could belong in an underground cavern. It could not remain among water and stone, rust and scales.
Pressed, dried flowers.
A scent like something pulled from between the pages of a book by an old hand.
He spread his wings.
As he crossed the vertical passage, a Fish Head burst from the water below. The skeletal head of a fish opened its mouth and breathed fire. The flame swept low across the surface. Alucard folded his wings and dropped, then rose again once the fire had passed. In a place where water and flame lived together, neither could be trusted. The Fish Head tried to leap up a second time, but he was already near the entrance.
The inside of the small chamber was strangely dry.
The moment he crossed the threshold, the sound of water receded by one layer. The floor was not wet, and the stone walls, though cold, bore no moss. It seemed as if someone had cut this room from another part of the castle and moved it here intact. There were no candles. No enemies. At the center of the chamber lay a coffin.
It resembled the coffins kept in the chambers of red light.
But there was no red light. No warmth of recovery. The lid of the coffin was open, and darkness lay inside it. Alucard stopped at the doorway. Dreams do not usually wait for people in this way. Dreams form behind the eyelids on their own, mixing things that have passed into false roads. But this coffin had prepared a dream like a room. Come in, it seemed to say. Lie down. Close your eyes by your own will.
He approached the coffin.
The scent of flowers grew stronger. Not flowers soaked in water, but flowers left beside a sickbed. Flowers that had once touched cold fingers for a moment, then remained only inside someone’s memory. Alucard looked down into the coffin. The darkness had no bottom. It was not a shadow whose depth could be measured by light. It was a darkness that made the one who looked into it turn inward.
He did not draw his sword.
If it were a coffin that could be cut, the castle would not have hidden it so quietly.
Alucard stepped into the coffin. His back and shoulders touched the cold floor. The Walk Armor struck the stone with a low sound. He placed both hands beside his body. The hilt of the Gladius was close to his fingers. The weight of Mormegil waited in silence beneath his cloak.
The lid did not move.
Yet the darkness descended.
At first, it seemed to fall from the ceiling. Soon he knew that it was not coming from outside, but spreading from within his eyes. The stone walls moved away, and the sound of water stretched long. A single droplet took too long to reach the floor. Alucard drew a breath. Air did not enter his lungs. Instead, the heat of a very old day touched the inside of his throat.
Smoke.
The smell of burning wood.
And the voices of people.
He opened his eyes.
The sky was low. No, it was not the sky, but black smoke covering the space above his head. Flames were not yet visible, but everything had the color of fire. Mud and ash were mixed on the stone ground, and footprints trampled one another as they pressed in a single direction. Beyond the walls, a bell rang. The sound began like a prayer and ended like a sentence.
Alucard tried to rise.
His body was heavy. It was not the weight of the Walk Armor. In dreams, the body recognizes its master late. His fingers moved, then his knees followed, and his cloak returned to his shoulders one beat afterward. He knew where he was.
A place he did not wish to know.
At the center of the square stood a wooden stake. A woman was bound to it.
Lisa.
The name struck his body before it became a sound. Alucard took one step forward. The shoulders of the crowd blocked his way. Men, women, children. Their faces blurred in the firelight and smoke. Not one of them possessed a whole face. Dreams do not grant faces to those who feel no guilt. They had only mouths. Mouths that shouted. Mouths that condemned. Mouths that spat fear after turning it into justice.
Alucard pushed through them.
Someone’s shoulder struck his chest. He reached out and shoved it aside. His body did not become mist. It did not become a bat. The dream lent him no power. Or else it made him forget his power. He went forward by human steps again, moving through the people. With each step, smoke scraped his throat.
Lisa held her head high.
Her face was touched by firelight. She was not without fear. Yet fear could not lower her. The moment Alucard saw her eyes, his feet stopped. They were eyes from far too long ago. Eyes that had remained clearer than all the darkness in the castle. They were searching for her son.
He opened his mouth.
No voice came.
Lisa’s lips moved.
“Adrian.”
The sound of the crowd drew far away for an instant. The bell, the smoke, the ash beneath his feet—all of it receded. Alucard moved closer. The wood at the foot of the stake had not fully caught. Small embers licked at the bark, and soon greater flames would rise.
“Listen to me.”
Her voice was gentle. So gentle that, for a moment, the cruelty of the square felt like a lie.
“Do not hate mankind.”
Alucard stopped breathing.
Those were the words he remembered. Words that had remained undefiled even among blood and fire and bells. A plea not to hate humans. A final restraint against cursing them all for what they had done. A small door Lisa left behind before Dracula’s rage swallowed the world.
But the light of the dream flickered.
A shadow passed across Lisa’s face. The crowd’s voice came near again, and the bell’s sound twisted low. Alucard heard it. The echo was wrong. The Echo of Bat trembled faintly deep within him. The square was wide, but the voice returned as if from a narrow room. The flames had not risen, yet heat came from behind him. The dream had imitated the scene, but forgotten the space.
Lisa spoke again.
“They are not worth saving.”
Alucard’s eyes narrowed.
The mouths of the crowd laughed. No, they opened as if laughing. No one was startled. They had been killing Lisa a moment ago, and now they had grown quiet like worshippers awaiting her words. The flames suddenly swelled. The wood skipped the order of burning and rose red, as though it had been burning for a long time already.
Lisa’s voice continued.
“Hurt them. Return their suffering to them.”
Alucard took one step back.
It was a very small movement. But the whole dream noticed. The crowd turned its head at once. Dozens of blurred faces looked at him. Lisa’s eyes looked at him as well. They still seemed to be Lisa’s eyes. That was why they were crueler.
Alucard set his hand on his sword.
“My mother would never say that.”
The sound of the square stopped.
More precisely, the sound lost its throat. The mouths were open, but nothing came out. The bell swung without ringing, and the flames moved without crackling. The softness peeled slowly from Lisa’s face. It was not the skin that fell away. The expression died first. The warmth in the eyes vanished, and a strange curve appeared at the corner of the mouth.
“Are you still bound by that woman’s words?”
The voice was Lisa’s, but the end of it was wrong. It was the sound of sharp nails crawling over silk.
Alucard did not answer.
The Gladius was drawn.
At that instant, the square collapsed.
The crowd scattered like ash, and the stake stretched long. The flames did not rise upward, but spread sideways, and the smoke in the sky sank like a ceiling. The ropes binding Lisa loosened like black serpents. The woman’s body rose into the air. The outline of her dress tore apart, and beneath it appeared the shadows of bat wings, sharp claws, and a long, curved tail.
She laughed.
Lisa’s face was no longer there. Yet it had not completely vanished. The Succubus deliberately left its trace. The line of the eyes, the curve of the lips, the first syllable of the voice. Just enough of a beloved memory to use as a wound.
Alucard lowered the tip of his sword.
The dream square had become a room. The walls could not be seen, but the faint stone pattern of a counterfeit sanctuary spread across the floor. The coffin’s darkness had become a battlefield. It was not a wide space. At the center remained the shadow of the stake, and on either side flames swayed like low walls. The space above was open, but only to the height the dream permitted.
The Succubus moved first.
She did not descend. In the air she twisted her body and aimed her fingertips at Alucard. Red, heart-shaped lights dropped from her palms. They were not as fast as fireballs. They approached slowly, but changed direction. If he dodged, they followed. If he cut them, they looked ready to split in two. Alucard avoided the first by stepping aside. The second read the line of his evasion and curved in low.
He cut too late.
The blade split the red light. The light did not disappear. It burst against the back of his hand. Before heat could become pain, a whisper entered his mind. Hate. Remember. Do not forget. He clenched his teeth. The attacks of dreams do not aim only at flesh. They try to turn the direction of old wounds.
The Succubus laughed and descended.
Her claws aimed for his face. Alucard raised his sword. Claw and Gladius met. There was no metallic sound. Only the scratch of nails against glass. She did not press with force. She hooked his arm and drew her body close. For a very brief moment, Lisa’s scent came from her. Alucard’s wrist slowed by half a beat.
The Succubus did not miss that half beat.
Her tail struck his side.
The Walk Armor took the blow, but in the dream the impact passed through armor and entered deeper. Alucard was shoved toward the flames. They gave off real heat. Yet in that heat was the smell of the square. He moved away at once. The fire licked the edge of his cloak, and the cloth blackened.
His first judgment had been wrong.
If he moved in close to strip her away from Lisa’s afterimage, that very afterimage slowed his wrist. If he held his distance, the red lights wormed into the cracks of memory. The field was narrow, and she attacked from above, piercing only the moment the heart faltered. Alucard let out a long breath. Even in dreams, breath was necessary. Even if it was not necessary, the body had to believe it was.
The Succubus spread her hands.
This time, she was not alone. Her body divided into three. The same face, the same wings, the same laugh. Three Succubi floated in the air at different heights. The one on the right raised her hand, the one on the left flicked her tail, and the one in the center looked down at Alucard.
“Adrian.”
It was the voice of the one in the center.
Alucard’s eyelids trembled slightly.
The one on the left moved in that opening. Claws came in low. Alucard turned his sword to block. But the claws passed through the blade. An illusion. At the same time, a red light flew from the right. He lowered his body, but it grazed his shoulder. The whisper came again. You did not save her. You were late. You were silent.
He did not retreat.
The Succubus in the center stopped laughing. The real one does not prolong the laugh. In the moment of checking whether the attack has landed, the illusion keeps acting, and the real body prepares the next blow. Alucard saw the difference. He ran straight toward the center.
The Succubus’s eyes narrowed for the first time.
She rose higher. Alucard used the Leap Stone for the first jump, then stepped on the second beat in midair. But the dream returned that beat a little late. The emptiness beneath his foot trembled. The Succubus lowered her hand. Red hearts poured down at close range.
There was nowhere to evade.
Alucard used the Form of Mist.
His body blurred, and the lights passed through the vapor. The whispers could not reach him. But mist within a dream was more dangerous than in reality. To use a power that dissolves the self in a place made to shake the self. In the instant his body returned, the ground beneath him briefly vanished. Alucard fell. Above him, the Succubus laughed and descended.
Her claws aimed for his chest.
Alucard drew Mormegil.
The black blade swallowed the dream’s light. The entire room darkened for an instant. When the Succubus’s claws touched the flat of the sword, her laughter broke off. Mormegil could not cut her deeply. The mistress of this dream did not fear darkness. But in the moment the blade swallowed the light, Lisa’s afterimage blurred with it. The edges of the face she had stolen collapsed.
Alucard seized that moment.
As he landed, he lowered his body and used Mormegil’s weight to cut upward from below. The blade grazed beneath the Succubus’s thigh and tore through the edge of one wing. She drew back. What flowed was not black blood, but violet mist. Within that mist, small faces rose and vanished. The faces of the crowd. The mouths that had disappeared from the square.
The Succubus bared her teeth.
Now she abandoned Lisa’s voice.
Her wings spread wide, and the flames on both sides of the room rose at once. The stone pattern of the floor shuddered and disappeared; in its place, the ash of the square rose to his ankles. The battlefield had changed. His feet did not sink deeply, but each step scattered ash and obscured his sight. The Succubus descended into it and split into three again.
This time, the illusions attacked.
The one on the right swung her claws, the center one threw red light, and the left one lashed the ground with her tail. He could not immediately tell which was real. Alucard did not block the first attack. The right claw scraped across the shoulder of the Walk Armor. There was pain. It might have been real. The red light from the center exploded as soon as it touched the floor, throwing ash high. The tail on the left passed without sound.
Sound.
Alucard opened his hearing. Even in the dream, the Echo of Bat was not entirely silent. An illusion could make shape, but it could not press upon space with the same weight. Where the right one had passed, there had been the sound of claws. The center light had burst, but there had been no sound of fingertips cutting air. The left had made no sound, yet the ash had moved just a little too late.
The real one was above.
The Succubus was not one of the three. While the three illusions bound his sight, she had been descending from the ceilingless dark. Alucard did not look up. He leapt forward. Her claws tore through the space where his neck had been moments before. He turned and drew the Gladius. Mormegil’s weight would be too slow. He needed the faster sword.
The blade pierced the Succubus’s side.
She screamed. This scream had no borrowed voice in it. It was a thin, high demonic cry. The illusions wavered all at once. Alucard did not push the sword deep. If he drove it in, he would be seized. He withdrew at once and cut at the joint of her wing with the second stroke. The Succubus fell to the ground, then pushed off the ash with one hand and sprang up.
Mockery was gone from her face.
Only rage remained.
Red lights appeared all at once. This time they were not slow lights that followed him, but small hearts filling the entire room. Dozens of lights beat at different heights. Each pulse pushed the air. Alucard lowered his body and endured the first wave. At the second, the wound on his shoulder opened again. He had to move before the third came.
He became a bat.
The small body could see the spaces between the lights. What appeared to human eyes as a wall became, to wings, a path between currents of air. He flew low. The first light above, the second below, the third passed by folding his body. Red whispers brushed the edge of his wings. Hate. Repay. Blood for blood.
Alucard spat the Fire of Bat.
The flame was darker inside the dream. A dark red fireball wavered toward the Succubus. She did not try to dodge. She spread her hand to split the fire. But in that moment, Alucard returned to human form. The fire had been a feint. He fell behind it, gripping the Gladius with both hands.
The Succubus saw him too late.
She tried to make Lisa’s face again. The line of the eyes softened, and the lips trembled. It lasted only an instant. A moment stolen in order to speak a mother’s name.
Alucard did not stop.
The blade pierced beneath her chest.
The Succubus’s body bent backward. The red lights went out all at once. The flames also sank low. The ash of the square settled back to the floor, and the blurred faces of the crowd fell away from the walls. She grasped Alucard’s sword with both hands. Her fingers tried to look like the hands of a beautiful woman, but black cracks formed at every joint.
“How…”
The voice was now her own.
Alucard did not push the blade any farther. It was already deep enough.
The Succubus laughed as if exhaling. The laugh broke off halfway, like blood. A very late understanding passed through her eyes. Whose dream she had touched. Whose wound she had drawn out like an ornament. But understanding had come too late to be forgiven.
Alucard spoke quietly.
“Do not put that name in your mouth.”
He drew the sword free.
The Succubus collapsed backward. Her wings turned to ash first, and her tail unraveled like black smoke. The last thing to remain was the face. Neither Lisa’s face nor a demon’s face, but a crumbling mask. It scattered before it touched the floor. The flower scent left in the room grew suddenly strong, then vanished.
Silence came.
The silence of dreams is heavier than the silence of reality. There was no sound, yet unheard words seemed to remain around him. Alucard lowered the tip of his sword. His hand was trembling slightly. He did not try to hide it. The one from whom he might have hidden it had already disappeared.
The light of the square went out.
The darkness of the coffin descended again. This time, it was not darkness that swallowed, but darkness that withdrew. The floor vanished, the ash vanished, the stake vanished. For a moment it seemed Lisa’s voice might remain last. But no voice was heard.
That was right.
Her last words had ended long ago. They were not words a demon in a dream could make anew.
Alucard opened his eyes.
He was lying inside the coffin. The sound of water from the Underground Caverns returned. A single droplet fell from the ceiling and struck the stone floor. This time, it did not take long. He slowly sat up. The Walk Armor struck the coffin’s edge with a low ring. There was no ash on his cloak. Yet the scorch at the hem remained. He could not tell whether it had burned in the dream, or in the battle before it.
A red light shone inside the room.
It was not the light of a sanctuary. Beside the coffin, at the center of the space that had resembled one, a small golden circle floated. It did not flicker like a candle. It did not move at the sound of water drops or at the sound of Alucard’s breath. The metal shone coldly, and inside it was engraved a pattern so fine it seemed nearly invisible.
Gold Ring.
The name did not enter him like the sound of coins. It was quieter. The feeling of a single gear finding its place inside a locked mechanism. Alucard reached out. Before the ring settled onto his palm, it seemed to pause in the air. As if to say that this object was not a reward granted to him, but a key entrusted to him for a door yet unopened.
He closed his hand around the ring.
It was cold.
That cold was smaller than the cold of the dream coffin, but clearer. Alucard rolled the ring between his fingers. The gold held light, but no warmth. The castle’s objects often did. They opened roads without saying where those roads would lead. He put the ring away and stepped out of the coffin.
The room was still quiet.
But it was not the same quiet as when he had entered. Where the flower scent had disappeared, only the smell of wet stone and old water remained. The cave was a cave again. The dream had borrowed the room, and when defeated, had returned it.
Alucard looked back once from the threshold.
The coffin was empty. The lid remained open, and the darkness no longer seemed deep. Still, he did not believe it was truly empty. The castle does not discard a place after using it once. Someone’s dream, someone’s final words, someone’s weak moment—such things remain long in the cracks of stone.
He went outside.
The sound of water grew louder. In the lower passage, a Fish Head broke the surface again. A fireball cut through the darkness. Alucard turned his body aside. The flame struck the wall and scattered. He became a bat and flew low above the water. Cold air divided beneath his wings. The body returned from the dream was lighter for a while, and that lightness was dangerous. He deliberately slowed himself.
He landed on the first stone pillar.
Before crossing to the second, he opened his left hand. The cold of the Gold Ring still remained in his palm. One ring. The Silver Ring had yet to be found. Two circles would have to meet to open some mechanism. The clock room of the Marble Gallery, that central chamber where time was always misaligned. The castle had long since split its answer in two and hidden the pieces.
And the corridor of spikes still remained.
The black passage he had turned away from in the Catacombs. The sharp darkness that could not be crossed by the Form of Mist alone. He remembered the sound of metal scraping against metal there. It would soon be time to return. But it was not a path to enter unprepared. The castle does not open the same door more easily to one who has once turned back.
Alucard adjusted his grip on the sword.
Another flame rose from the water. He jumped. With the first leap he crossed over the fire, and with the second beat he caught the wet stone wall with his hand. Cold wind came down from the passage above. There was no flower scent in that wind. Instead, there was a faint metallic sound. Far away, the sound of spikes not yet reached, rubbing against one another.
Alucard climbed toward it.
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