[Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Novel – Episode 21] What Death Did Not Give Back
A small scythe dipped as if in greeting, then flew at Alucard's throat.
He knocked it aside with his short sword. Sparks burst where the cracked blade met the scythe, and before the wrist that had blocked the first could recover, the second and third came in at different heights. Alucard took one step back, letting the blade aimed at his chest slide off the back of his sword, then kicked the one aimed at his knee into the wall with the toe of his boot.
The scythes embedded in the cavern wall dissolved into black mist and drifted back to the edge of the circle.
At its center, Death revealed himself.
The black robe did not drag across the ground, but hung long in midair, and beneath the hood there was only darkness, neither flesh nor bone. The pale hands floating at either side had not aged in the least since the day they stripped Alucard of his weapons and armor.
"You bear more wounds than when you first entered this castle."
Alucard lowered the cracked sword before him.
"Stand aside."
"You said as much then as well. That you would not abandon the side of mankind."
As Death's fingers slowly curled, the small scythes tightened their circle. The four relics within Alucard's coat were reacting less to his voice than to the final pulse hidden inside that hood.
"This time, I cannot send you back."
"I never expected you to."
Before Alucard had finished speaking, the scythes flew from every side. The ones coming head-on could be tracked with the eye, but the blades that scraped the cavern walls and curved back were lost among the echoes between the stone pillars. He sent out a brief pulse and read their paths, then lowered his body. Two passed over his head, one grazed his cuirass, and the latest blade bit into the exposed left shoulder.
The scythe that cut flesh did not stop, but drew a line of blood from the wound. As the red thread stretched toward Death's fingers, the darkness inside the hood deepened.
Alucard severed the line of blood with the tip of his sword. The scythe struck the cavern ceiling and vanished, but Death had already slipped behind his back. The black robe spread across his vision, and in Death's pale hands two slow globes of light were born.
The lights were not fast. One sought his chest, the other his ankle, stubbornly adjusting its course. Alucard moved with a stone pillar between them, but the globes curved around it and kept following. When he changed height with a second leap, the small scythes closed off the upper path where they had been waiting.
His first decision was not to give Death distance. If he could get under that hood before the summoning was complete, he might cut down the number of small scythes. Alucard passed between the two globes as mist, returned to human form, and swung the heavy blade.
The black robe split from shoulder to waist.
But there was nothing inside to cut. Only darkness spilled through the torn cloth, and Death's body gathered again behind Alucard's back, where he had already passed. As a pale hand brushed the nape of his neck, the weight of the two weapons at his waist vanished for an instant.
The old emptiness passed through him again. The memory of that moment when his sword was stolen from his hand, his armor and belongings scattered through the castle, and he had been forced to stand there unresisting and empty-handed.
But this time, no real weapon had disappeared. Death was only taking from him the sensation of the sword in his grip. Alucard clenched his fist harder so he would not lose hold of an unseen hilt.
"Have you counted all that you have reclaimed?"
Death whispered at close range.
"All of it belongs to its original master."
Instead of answering, Alucard drove his left elbow backward. It seemed to pass through the pale hand, but the instant Vlad's Ring pulsed, he felt the touch of something like bone. Death's shape was shoved back half a step, and the feeling in the stolen hand returned from the tip of the blade inward.
The relics were forcing form upon him. Before a body gathered from pieces of his father, even Death could not remain wholly without substance.
Even after confirming that, Alucard did not draw the relics out. What Death wanted as well was to gather all five pieces in one place. The more he borrowed that power, the less clear it became whose hand was fighting.
The two globes of light came back at last. He lowered himself so one would pass through Death's robe, and struck the other upward with the cracked short sword. The blade could not withstand the impact and broke at the middle, but the light sprang into the ceiling and scattered the ring of small scythes.
A broken piece of the sword fell to the floor.
Death looked down at it and spread his fingers. Dozens of small scythes vanished, and in their place green skulls appeared around the hood. Their jaws hanging open, they spread in an arc, then closed in on Alucard from both sides.
He threw away the broken sword and drew the heavy weapon. The first skull shattered under the back of the blade, blue fire coiling around his wrist, and he evaded the second as mist. But the skulls did not disappear. They rose again near the floor and blocked his retreat in a U-shaped curve.
Death sent two red scythes through the gap. Unlike the smaller ones, each blade was as tall as a man. They flew to the far end of the wall, turned, and came back, dividing the narrow breadth of the cavern above and below.
Alucard vaulted over the first blade. When the second returned at chest height, he changed into a bat and dropped beneath it, but at a movement of Death's hand the red scythe dipped at once. He returned to human form just before the edge sheared off a wingtip, rolled across the floor, and came to a stop where the broken fragment of his sword lay.
His left hand snatched up the piece. Holding two blades of different lengths, the heavy sword in his right and the broken shard in his left, he counted the intervals at which the small scythes returned. Whenever Death began another attack, the ring of scythes vanished for an instant. All the blades came at the command of one hand, and none could keep a perfect form at the same time as the rest.
Alucard charged straight in.
Death formed the globes of light, and the ring of small scythes blurred. Alucard struck the first globe aside with the broken sword fragment, then deliberately gave the second his exposed left shoulder. While the light burned into the wound, he drove himself inward and cut at Death's wrist with the heavy blade.
This time the sword did not pass through.
The pale hand was severed at the wrist and turned to black smoke, and from inside Death's robe hundreds of voices let out a brief breath. One red scythe lost control and sheared through a cavern pillar. The massive stone tilted and split the battlefield in two, and the green skulls struck the falling debris and scattered.
With his remaining hand, Death gathered the smoke of the severed wrist back toward the wound. The moment Alucard moved to cut again, the entire robe opened apart to either side, and from within it two enormous blades appeared.
The black cloth peeled away like a shed skin and rose to the ceiling. Beneath it hung a shape with a long curved spine, ribs, and a tail of bone. Scythes were fixed to the ends of both arms in place of hands, and in the center of the hoodless head was set a single red eye.
When Death's second form unfolded, the cavern seemed to narrow. One scythe scraped the ceiling while the other swept the floor. Alucard stepped back to evade the first crossing attack, but the bony tail looked like empty air without flesh, throwing off his sense of distance.
He treated the tail as an obstacle and moved aside. Contrary to expectation, his body passed through the spaces between those bones, and the motion of evasion left him stopped instead beneath the two scythes as they came down.
The blades fell together.
Alucard raised the heavy sword crosswise and caught them. The impact drove his knees into the stone hard enough to crack it, and the fastening on his remaining right shoulder plate snapped. The plate fell, but did not come free completely, hanging from its waist strap.
Death raised one arm. The scythe detached from it and flew in a wide circle. Alucard lowered his body and let the first pass, but the blade curved around behind a pillar and came back from the opposite side for his neck.
He threw himself between the bones of the tail. The scythe passed through the insubstantial space and returned to its master's arm without cutting through its owner's ribs, but in that instant the red eye lost track of Alucard. Beneath Death's body, a narrow space opened where both scythes were hard-pressed to reach.
From within it, Alucard thrust upward. The sword point split one vertebra, and Death twisted his body and flung him off. The bony tail lashed at the air, making threats that could not touch him, but now he knew what had substance and what did not.
When both scythes rose, they would chop downward. When only one arm lifted, he would throw. When the spine bent back, the whole body would lunge. When the red eye dimmed, the small scythes returned for a moment. The form had changed, but it had not killed its tells.
Alucard cut the strap of the fallen right shoulder plate with his foot. He kicked the metal up to cover Death's red eye, and the thrown scythe split the plate in two. Hidden behind that sound, he used a second leap to rise to the level of Death's head.
Death drew both arms inward. The two scythes closed like shears.
Alucard did not keep his human body to the end. He became a small bat, slipped through the narrow gap between the closing blades, and regained his form directly before the red eye. With the broken sword fragment in his left hand, he drove it beneath the eye and pried apart the space between bone and relic.
The red eye looked at him.
It was not Death's eye. In the pupil, his father's face overlaid it like a mirror from ages past, and the four relics in his coat all leapt at once toward the fifth piece.
Death shook his head and hurled Alucard into the wall. Because he did not let go of the sword fragment, the gap beneath the eye tore wider, and even in the shock of striking the wall with his back, he reversed the heavy sword in his right hand.
Both scythes rose again. This time there was no room to evade.
Alucard kicked off the wall and threw himself toward Death's chest. Going inside the descending blades, he wedged the heavy sword between the ribs and used the hilt as a lever to drag the head down. The red eye dropped until it was right before him.
His left hand closed on the relic.
Vlad's Eye was hot and wet. Black nerves joined to Death's bones wound around his fingers and tried to show him everything at once: the equipment stolen from him, the blood he had lost, the final faces of all he had killed. Alucard did not close his eyes. Of everything he saw, he pushed away each memory that was not his own.
On the day Death stripped him of his weapons at the castle gate, he had been unable to move. The body he bore now still carried the wounds and choices gained after that. What Death had failed to take from him was not his equipment, but the time he had walked on empty-handed.
Alucard gripped the eye and pulled back.
As the nerves snapped, both of Death's scythes fell to the floor. The bony form split apart soundlessly and became black dust, and the last pale hand still remaining reached out, fingers stretching to reclaim the relic.
Alucard cut that hand apart from the wrist with the heavy blade.
"Return to my father's side."
Whether the words were a command or a farewell, Death did not ask. The fingers crumbled into ash and scattered, and not a single small scythe remained in the cavern.
Alucard set Vlad's Eye in his palm. The red pupil still lived and moved as it looked at his face, and when the Ring, the Rib, the Heart, and the Tooth answered in turn, its gaze shifted toward the castle's heart beyond the cavern.
The five relics had gathered.
The entire castle gave one great pulse. Red light like blood flowed from the cracks in the walls, and from far away came the sound of the clock in the Black Marble Gallery stopping, carried through stone. The central gate was calling him.
Alucard placed the Eye inside a dark glass vial and covered its light. He did not go at once toward the castle's center. From the far side of the cavern came footsteps like his own.
One step lagged, the next was quicker. As though it already knew even the new weight made by the five relics, the footsteps trod on the next stone before Alucard moved.
He unfastened the hilt of the broken short sword from his waist and set it on the floor, then kept only the remaining heavy blade in his hand.
Across the waterway that led deeper into the Reverse Caverns, a silver-haired figure opened its eyes.
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