[Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Novel Episode 8] Where the Water Strangles First
A drop of water fell onto the blade.
Only one. Yet the sound cut through the music of the marble gallery and made Alucard’s wrist stiffen by the smallest measure. He lowered the tip of his sword and looked down at the floor. Black water was seeping up through the gaps between the stones. It was not leaking from above. It was rising from below. Each time the castle drew breath, something long trapped in its depths seemed to be forced back up through its throat.
He paused before the door. The blue seal was gone now, and the door no longer resisted him. For something that had remained locked for so long, it opened far too easily. When his palm pushed against its surface, cold air flowed out from within. The smells of marble, candle wax, and old incense retreated, replaced by wet stone and ancient moss.
Alucard folded the edge of his cloak once and drew it behind his left arm. The stairway was narrow. In wet places, cloth was the first thing to be seized. Before setting his foot down, he held his sword-hand slightly farther from his body. Too close to the wall, and the blade would catch. Walk the center, and the drop below could not be seen. Choice was always made somewhere between the two.
The first step was wet.
He touched it only with the toe of his boot. The sole scraped lightly against the stone. The water was still shallow, but its surface was strangely dark. Even when candlelight touched it, it gave nothing back. It looked as if another night had been laid beneath black glass. The stairs bent several times and continued downward. The music above did not fade away. It changed, instead, as though submerged, and followed him in muffled tones. As the notes blurred, the sound of water between the stones grew clearer.
Halfway down, a spearhead shot out from a wall niche.
Alucard tilted his head back. The spear passed in front of his throat, cutting a few strands of hair that dropped into the water. The armor inside the niche was rusted, but its arm still moved well enough. A boneless hand thrust the shaft forward, then drew it back. A lengthening spear. A weapon that lied about distance in the dark.
He did not rush in. He waited once more.
The shadow inside the niche moved. The spearhead came again, this time low, aiming for his knee. Alucard drew his left foot back and struck downward with his blade. Metal bit metal. The shaft twisted aside, and in that opening he stepped in half a pace. Before his elbow could strike the wall, he turned his wrist and cut. The helmet split at an angle, and black dust spilled from within into the water.
He did not move on at once. The fallen armor’s arm twitched one last time beneath the surface. In this castle, the dead often pretended to die again.
The second enemy could not be seen. What came first was the low sound of a bowstring drawn tight. Alucard lowered his body. A bone arrow passed above his head and buried itself in the wall. Though the stone was damp, the arrowhead sank deep. Across the lower landing, a skeleton archer was setting a second arrow to its bow. A slanted angle. Wet stairs. A narrow space to evade, and one slip would send him tumbling down.
He did not leap. He descended one step and raised his shield. The arrow struck it. Dry bone scraped metal, the impact traveling through his wrist. He used that recoil to turn and stepped onto the edge of the landing with only his toes. The Leap Stone awakened quietly inside his body. At the peak of the first jump, he stepped once more upon the air. Damp air tore beneath his foot. His body rose close to the low ceiling, and the empty sockets of the skeleton archer came directly before him.
The blade passed before the bowstring could.
The skeleton scattered over the edge. Bones struck the stairs several times before sinking into the water. Alucard landed with one knee slightly bent. Water splashed around his ankle. In that instant, pain tightened sharply through his skin.
He pulled his foot back at once.
Steam rose faintly from where the water had touched him. There was no wound, but the pain was too keen to belong to cold water. Water harmful to the living. No, water that recognized the blood flowing inside him. Alucard looked down at the back of his hand. The mark on his skin soon faded, but the pain withdrew slowly.
“I see.”
The words were not spoken to the water, nor to the castle. They were a brief note made to himself. Down here, the ground beneath his feet was also an enemy.
The staircase ended suddenly. What opened before him was less a room than a deep well. A vast vertical chamber had been carved through the stone. On one side, broken platforms descended along the wall; on the other, almost empty darkness fell away. From below came the sound of a waterfall. Water shattered somewhere in unseen depths. A faint mist rose upward, wetting the stone pillars.
Alucard stood at the edge of the nearest platform. Below was black. Yet not completely dark. Through the water mist, blue light glimmered from time to time. Not a natural light, but something water might have made after feeding on nightmares for too long.
He chose the path to the left. Narrow, but there were footholds. The right was too deep and too straight. When this castle offered a straight path, it usually demanded payment from below.
Spearmen appeared again. Two, then three. In a wide space, they would not have been formidable. The problem was where they stood. One at the edge of a platform, one halfway down the stairs, another below with its spear pointed upward. If Alucard jumped, spearpoints waited. If he stopped, the skeleton archer above would shoot. The battlefield had been arranged by the castle before the enemies ever moved.
The first spear extended. He did not bend backward; he leaned forward. As the spear passed above his shoulder, he lifted the shaft with the back of his sword. His foot was already on the next stone outcropping. In narrow places, the floor would win before the enemy did. He reduced the number of cuts. One block, one push, one passage through. In this corridor, passing mattered more than killing.
But the last spearman did not yield. Light flashed twice beneath its rusted helmet. The shaft trembled briefly, then changed length without warning. Alucard misread the timing. The spearhead came later than expected and farther than expected, grazing his side. Cloth tore. Cold pain scraped beneath his ribs.
His eyes narrowed.
He did not retreat. Instead, he entered inside the spear’s reach. He denied it the space to extend a second time. The moment his left hand seized the shaft, rust tore at his palm. Had he been holding the shield, he would have been too late. With the shield slung across his back, he cut short with his sword. The center of the headless armor split open. Black water poured out from within and ran down the platform.
That blood did not mix with the water. It floated briefly on the surface, then broke apart like burnt paper.
The deeper he descended, the colder the air became. The sound of water, however, grew louder. At last, the waterfall revealed itself. A great white sheet was being torn endlessly through the dark. The torrent struck the ground with a roar, and beside it an old passage continued, half-hidden. Alucard did not approach the waterfall. Even the spray stung his skin.
He looked toward the deep tunnel to the right.
There was no door there. Instead, an opening gaped naturally in the stone. It looked as if water had carved it over time, but the edges were too smooth. Something had passed through often. On the floor were long dragging marks. Not the tracks of a beast’s feet. Something had scraped through on its belly. Many times, in the same direction.
Alucard lowered the point of his sword. He did not step on the trail, but walked beside it. Each puddle held a faint ripple. Not from the wind. From deeper inside the passage, a very low breath was pushing between the stones.
The ceiling suddenly dropped.
He bent his knees and passed beneath it. His cloak brushed stone. His fingers closed again around the sword hilt of their own accord. In narrow spaces, a long blade was a disadvantage. But there was no time here to change weapons. He held the sword close to his side, the tip drawn slightly behind him. Not a posture for striking forward, but for cutting what came in.
The passage ended in a small chamber.
It was too tall to be a room, too enclosed to be a hall. The walls were wet, and shallow water pooled at the center of the floor. Bone fragments floated on the surface. Some were the bones of small animals; others looked like human finger bones. Alucard took one step inside and stopped.
Behind him, stone closed.
He turned quickly, but too late. The entrance through which he had come was blocked by a stone door rising from below. Water leaked through the seam. Slowly, but without pause.
Something moved beneath the surface.
At first, it was only a shadow. A long, thick shape circled beneath the shallow water. Its size and the depth of the room did not agree. If the water was shallow, its body should have shown. But it did not. The water itself was lying about its depth.
Alucard drew his left foot back.
Then the water burst open.
A huge serpent-like head surged upward. It had no eyes, only a mouth. The jaws opened wide, and rows of teeth gleamed inside like wet glass. Water struck the ceiling. Alucard rolled aside. The jaws bit into the place where he had been standing. The stone floor cracked. The creature’s neck was thick enough to fill the chamber, water and slime running between its scales.
He cut as soon as he landed. The blade scraped across the scales. Not deep. The surface was slick and tough. The creature responded less to injury than to contact. It coiled its neck and swept across the room. Alucard leaped. One jump was not enough. His second jump carried him close to the ceiling. Below him, the massive body passed, shoving the water aside.
As he fell, the creature’s head shot upward.
A mistake. He had judged the upper air to be safe too late. In this room, height was not refuge. It was bait. He twisted his body in midair, but did not evade fully. The side of the jaw struck his shoulder. His body flew into the wall. When his back hit stone, his breath stopped. He did not lose the sword. That alone made the next movement possible.
The creature charged again. This time it did not open its mouth wide. It meant to strike headfirst. Alucard waited with his back against the wall. Move too early, and the bend of its neck would follow. Move too late, and he would be crushed into the wall. He watched the muscles beneath the creature’s neck contract once.
Then.
He slid to the left. The wet floor pulled at his boots. His body dropped so low it nearly fell. The creature’s head smashed into the wall. Stone dust rained down. Alucard turned the force of his near fall into a rotation and cut into the pale flesh beneath the neck. A gap without scales. For the first time, the blade went deep.
The creature screamed. The sound was less the cry of a serpent than water tearing through a narrow pipe. The water in the room shook with it. Alucard stepped back. Thick fluid that looked like blood slid down the blade. When it touched the water, purple foam rose.
The pattern seemed simple, but the chamber made it complicated. The thing circled beneath the water, then erupted from one of three directions. If it swept low, it aimed at the ankles. If it rose straight, it cut off the air. If it paused briefly, it would ram. Alucard tried to follow it with his eyes at first. Too slow. The glimmer in the water always lingered half a beat behind its true position.
So he used his eyes less.
He watched the ripples. Just before it rose, the water’s surface did not make a circle. It formed a long split. The direction of the body underwater and the direction from which the head emerged were not the same. When the long body bent beneath the surface, the first thing to move was not the head, but the far part of the neck. That movement pushed aside the shallowest water first.
On the next attack, he waited, then brought his sword down toward the break in the ripple. The moment the creature’s head tried to rise, the blade split its upper jaw. Several teeth flew out and floated on the water like little white boats.
The creature changed its method.
It no longer hid completely beneath the water. It circled the chamber with part of its neck exposed. Water trapped between its body and the wall made a shrill sound. It was reducing the space available to him. Alucard did not move to the center. The center looked broad, but could be attacked from every side. He chose the broken wall, the place where the creature had just rammed. The loose stones made the footing uncertain, but there was too little space there for the creature’s long body to turn fully.
As expected, it coiled toward him. This time, the body came before the mouth. Alucard set his foot on the broken stones. The wet rock shifted. He did not force it still. As the footing collapsed, he lowered himself with it and thrust his sword toward the narrow gap beneath the passing body. The scales split. This time he did not stab and withdraw. With both hands on the hilt, he dragged the blade against the force of the creature’s movement.
A long wound opened, spilling slime and black blood.
The creature reared back. The entire room trembled. Water droplets fell from the ceiling all at once. The water leaking under the stone door suddenly began to rise faster. It climbed above his ankles. Pain ran up his legs. If he stood in it too long, his movement would slow.
He had to finish it.
The creature lifted its head for the last time. It did not open its mouth. It raised its entire neck. A downward smash. The jaw was not the danger now. The weight was. Alucard did not raise the sword above his shoulder. He held the point low and turned his body sideways. He waited for the creature to fall. The air compressed first. Water was pushed outward. A shadow covered his face.
He stepped forward.
The serpent’s head shattered the floor behind him. At the same instant, Alucard’s sword surged upward from beneath the neck. Soft flesh, the edge of scales, then something hard as bone. The resistance was great enough to bend his wrist. He did not push with his arms alone. He drove his entire body forward. His cloak dragged in the water, and one knee scraped the floor. The blade passed through the neck and emerged behind the head.
The creature stopped for a moment.
Its mouth opened, but no sound came. Only water poured out. The massive body slowly collapsed to the side. Water rushed one way, then returned. Alucard pulled the sword free and stepped back. The fallen body still twitched, but the motion had no direction. Little by little, it became no more than the motion of the water.
The stone door opened.
No — it did not open. It crumbled downward. A passage hidden behind the chamber wall was revealed. At the same time, a greater sound came from far off. At first he thought it was another waterfall. But the sound came not from above, but from the side. Water was rushing in.
He did not hesitate.
He ran into the passage. Behind him, the water inside the chamber rose. The dead beast’s body lifted on the surface and struck the wall. Ahead was a narrow vertical space. Pillars and platforms jutted out here and there, but most were wet. Water was rising from below. Fast. Too fast.
Alucard jumped onto the first pillar. The moment his foot touched, he looked for the next. The body had to move before the mind finished counting. Water boiled upward beneath his ankles. If it touched him, pain would follow; if it deepened, strength would drain away. He saved his second jump. When one leap was enough, he used only one. The force to push from the air again had to be saved to repair failure.
The third platform broke.
The instant his toe touched it, the stone dropped away. As soon as he felt his body fall, he released the second jump. The air split beneath his foot, and he barely caught a narrow outcropping on the right wall. His fingertips slipped. Water climbed to his thighs. His skin burned as if on fire.
He did not grit his teeth. Even that would waste strength.
He bent his wrist, pulled himself up, and jumped toward the upper platform on the left. The water had now swallowed the dead beast’s chamber completely and was filling the vertical passage like a throat. The sound of it rising from below was closer than the footsteps of any pursuer. He stepped onto the final pillar and threw himself into an opening in the ceiling.
When he rolled into the upper chamber, the water stopped just below.
As if an invisible line barred it. The black water did not rise higher. It only trembled beneath that boundary. Alucard remained on one knee and drew breath. The pain in his shoulder returned late. His clothes were soaked, and pale marks remained where the water had touched his legs. He wiped the slime from the blade with the back of his hand. It did not come clean.
Then he heard singing.
Or rather, a breath that sounded like singing. It resembled a woman’s voice, but it was not speech. It stretched long between the falling drops. It rose as if calling to a person, then fell as if calming a beast. Alucard stood. The room was wide. Its center was low, with higher ground on both sides. Puddles lay across the floor, and the rear wall had half collapsed into a water channel. Old columns had broken down into low cover.
She was at the far end of the room.
Her upper body had the shape of a woman. Wet hair covered her shoulders, and pale arms seemed to float in the darkness. But below that, she was not human. Beneath the water, several long necks writhed. Things that could not be called either serpents or fish. Between them, beast heads growled low. Water dripped from their mouths, forming little bubbles where it touched the floor.
Alucard walked on without stopping. Look too long, and the eye becomes bound to the human shape. The enemies of this castle often held out faces as bait.
She lifted an arm.
The first attack was water. Not merely a jet, but a stream that rose into the air and curved down like an arch. Alucard leaped aside. The water struck where he had stood and scattered across the floor. Droplets grazed his cheek. Cold pain. The same as the black water he had just passed through.
He tried to approach at once. But one of the long necks in the water lunged first. A beast head spat a heavy sphere of water. It seemed slow at first, then quickened as it drew near. Alucard raised his shield. The impact drove his arm back. Though it was water, it had weight. Spray from the shield’s edge burned his wrist.
The moment he took one step back, bubbles rose from a puddle.
They did not burst. They rose into the air and hardened into the shapes of small skulls. Four. Five. Empty eye sockets swayed toward him. Alucard cut in short strokes. One split, scattering water before his face. Another circled behind his shoulder. He lowered his body and swung the shield with his left hand. The watery skull struck it and broke, cold fragments spattering across his cloak.
She did not move. What moved was what lay below. Her body remained fixed at the center of the battlefield, while water, necks, and beast heads claimed every direction. Try to come close, and the heads blocked the way. Move away, and water streams and skulls followed. The low center of the room was dangerous with water, while the raised floors on both sides were too narrow for safe evasion.
Alucard corrected his first judgment. He could not rush straight to the main body. This was a fight in which the path had to be made first.
The left beast head growled low. Its neck muscles swelled. A water sphere. He did not raise his shield. This time he evaded sideways and cut beneath the head. The blade opened wet flesh deeply. The head twisted, but did not die. Immediately, the neck on the right bent to bite him. Alucard started to step back, then stopped. A puddle lay behind him. He leaned forward. The teeth snapped above his head. The tips of his hair were cut and fell onto the water.
The sword moved upward from below.
The lower jaw of the right neck split open. The beast howled. The entire room answered that howl. Stone fragments fell from the ceiling. Alucard heard it too late. The howl itself was an attack. A falling stone struck his shoulder. One knee bent for an instant. In that gap, the water stream came again.
He rolled. The stream passed, scraping across the floor. He came out of the roll in the low center. Water covered his palm. His skin went numb as if touched by flame. He tried to rise at once, but the floor was slick. His left foot slipped.
Her face seemed to smile for the first time.
The necks beneath the water moved all at once. Three directions. Water sphere, teeth, skull bubbles. Alucard abandoned the attempt to stand. From that low posture, he braced his shield forward and let the water sphere slide off it, then turned his sword backward to strike the skull. He could not avoid the bite. A long neck caught his left arm and passed by. Not deep, but the teeth tore flesh.
He followed the pain.
If he withdrew, the neck would escape. If it escaped, it would attack again. Instead of pulling his arm free, he pushed toward the beast’s jaw. For a moment, the angle of the teeth broke. The sword in his right hand drove in short. It pierced the black flesh inside the throat. The beast opened its jaws. Alucard pulled his arm free, rolled aside, and this time reached the higher floor.
Blood fell from his fingertips. It floated for a moment before touching the water.
He did not catch his breath. Breath belonged after the fight. What he needed now was order. The bubbles rose first from puddles. The water stream was preceded by a tilt of her shoulder before the arm lifted. The water sphere could be read from the swelling of a beast head’s neck. Falling stones came after the howl.
She raised her arm again.
This time, Alucard did not dodge backward. He jumped forward. The water stream descended in an arc. Between its beginning and its end, beneath the highest point, there was a brief opening. He leaped toward that gap twice. The first jump carried him under the stream. The second carried him over a beast head. His blade turned over in midair. As he landed, he cut through the root of the left neck.
One neck fell into the water. The room shook violently.
Her song stopped.
Now the attacks changed. The remaining necks moved lower, faster. The water spheres grew larger, and the skull bubbles rose closer to him. Above all, the howling became frequent. Stones kept falling from the ceiling. Alucard could not stay long on the higher ground. The fragments broke the side platforms apart, and the puddles at the center spread wider. The battlefield was shrinking.
He was forced back. Almost to the entrance.
Then he saw the shadows beneath the water gather in a single direction. For the remaining necks to lunge at him together, the root beneath the main body had to lean to one side. Her upper body lost balance for the briefest instant. The face still looked forward, but one shoulder dipped slightly. There. The seam where the human shape joined the monster below.
Alucard dropped his shield.
The dull sound of it striking the floor cut through the water noise. Both hands closed around the sword hilt. One beast head spat a water sphere. He angled the flat of his sword and split it obliquely. He could not block it completely. Water struck his face and chest. His vision flashed white. But his feet did not stop.
Skull bubbles rose. He did not cut them all. He struck only the front two and took the rest on his cloak. Pain like watery teeth scraped down his back. From the left, a long neck lunged. He lowered his body and passed beneath it. Teeth closed on empty air.
She howled again.
The ceiling answered. Stones fell. Alucard did not avoid them; he used them. One large stone struck the floor in front of the right beast head. The beast turned its head for an instant. Through that gap, he entered. Water reached his knees. His legs grew heavy. But one more step was enough.
Her arm came down. Her nails aimed for his face. The arm looked human, but its force was not. It was sharp and fast, like a branch. Alucard turned his head aside. A red line opened on his cheek. At the same time, the sword rose from below.
The blade cut through the place where the monster’s body and the woman’s form met.
At first, nothing changed. Her eyes stared at Alucard. The sound of water did not stop. But on the next breath, the necks below began to writhe in different directions. A single will had been severed. Alucard did not draw the sword out. He drove the hilt deeper and turned his body into a horizontal cut.
This time, there was a sound.
Not song. Not howl. The sound of many beast throats tearing at once. The water in the room was pushed back. The remaining necks rose toward the ceiling, then fell one by one. The beast heads clattered their teeth and sank into the water. Her upper body tried to remain standing until the end. Pale hands moved as if trying to grasp the air. But there was nothing to grasp.
The body collapsed.
Water burst high. Alucard stepped back. No further attack came. The bubbles in the puddles ceased. The falling stones stopped. When all the movement that had filled the battlefield vanished at once, the underground silence hurt the ears.
He lifted his sword and looked at the blade. Slime, black blood, and water were mixed across it. With a light flick of the wrist, he cast the liquid onto the floor. This time the water did not foam. It merely scattered and settled.
A low grinding came from the rear of the chamber.
The passage the monster had blocked began to open. Water displaced by the battle drained that way, forming a narrow current. The smell of the waterway deepened. Alucard picked up the shield he had dropped and listened for a moment. From far away came a sound like an oar moving through water. A steady friction across the surface. Down here, in this underground place, someone was rowing a boat.
He followed the sound.
The passage was low and long. The walls were marked by many old waterlines. Some were dark and hardened with age; others looked freshly wet. The water here had never remained at one height. Like the castle breathing, it rose and fell. Each time, paths must have opened and closed.
At the end of the narrow way, the floor dropped away suddenly. Below, a wider and darker surface stretched out. An old boat was tied at the edge of the water. Beside it stood a silent ferryman. His face was hidden beneath a hood, and a long oar rested in his hands. Whether he saw Alucard or not was impossible to tell. The boat merely rocked a little with the current.
Alucard stood at the water’s edge. The water was still his enemy. But now he saw a path beyond it. Down here, a road was not only a hole carved through a wall. A silence drifting across water could be a road as well.
The ferryman said nothing.
Alucard asked nothing. Before stepping into the boat, he looked back. From the chamber where Scylla had fallen, there was no sound. Yet that silence did not feel like the silence of a finished battle. It felt closer to the silence of something deeper listening. The castle’s underground had remembered him now. His blood had touched the water, and his sword had severed the necks beneath it.
The boat began to move slowly.
The oar parted the water. The surface folded aside like black cloth. Alucard stood at the center of the boat, keeping his balance. Drops from the edge of his cloak made small dark marks on the boards. As they passed through the darkness, he saw an old statue embedded in the wall. Its face was half-submerged. Whether human or monster, he could not tell. A faint smile remained at the corner of its mouth.
At the end of the waterway, a small light appeared.
It was not candlelight. It was closer to the reflection of sacred metal rising from beneath the water. Without explanation, the ferryman stopped the boat. Alucard stepped off. His toes neared the water, but this time he touched only the stone at the edge. On a narrow altar rested a small relic. It had a strange shape, made less for holiness than for function. Yet around it lingered the unmistakable trace of an old blessing.
When he reached for it, the relic shone coldly.
The power that entered his body was not splendid. It did not sharpen his sword, nor did it lift his legs higher. Instead, it felt like a very thin boundary forming between his skin and the water. A veil that kept the water from recognizing his blood at once. The underground passage changed shape again. The surface that had pushed him away until now, for the first time, looked like a path.
Alucard slowly placed one foot into the water.
No pain came.
The water was cold. Nothing more. He looked down without closing his eyes. Beneath the surface, stone steps continued. A path he had not seen before. Or one he could not have entered even if he had seen it. The stairs descended into the dark, then bent to the left, where a faint current moved.
He climbed out again and looked toward where the boat had been. The ferryman was already receding into the distance. The sound of the oar grew smaller in the dark. What remained was the low breath of water, the cold of the stone walls, and the name that was still not finished in the castle above.
Richter.
The name sank for a moment like a stone dropped into water, then rose again. Maria’s eyes had resembled this cold surface. Anxiety deeper than certainty. Alucard rested his hand on the sword hilt. Monsters could be slain. Read the pattern, find the opening, cut through the heart. But if someone’s will had been clouded like water, when should the blade be raised?
He did not search long for an answer.
This was a castle that showed the next door before it gave answers. Alucard descended again into the underwater stairway. His cloak spread dark across the surface, then followed behind him. The world beneath the water dulled every sound. Even his own footsteps seemed to come from far away. Things with fish-like heads moved in the cracks of the walls, but they did not yet attack. They seemed to sense the boundary newly formed around him.
At the end of the stairs, the current moved to the right. But above and to the left, from a narrow passage leading out of the water, came the faint smell of iron. In an underground world of water and stone, that dry scent arrived suddenly. A distant arena, iron bars, old blood. The road was still far, but its direction was clear.
Alucard lifted his head beneath the water.
Beyond the darkness above, he thought he heard a very low roar of voices. Whether it was real sound or an echo the castle had sent ahead, he could not know. He walked toward it. The water could no longer seize his ankles. It only closed quietly behind him, hiding the battle he had just passed beneath its black surface.
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