[Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Novel - Episode 22] The Face That Stole Even Wounds
Across the waterway, Alucard wore intact armor on his left shoulder.
It had the same silver hair, the same pale face, the same height and gaze—but there was no plate torn open by the Darkwing Bat, no skin stiffened by Medusa's light. A red cloak streamed long from its neck, just as his had when he first entered the castle, and at its waist hung side by side an unbroken short sword and the heavy dark-bladed weapon steeped in shadow.
Because it resembled his complete form, it felt all the more alien.
When Alucard stopped at the water's edge, the figure opposite him stopped as well. The black water clinging to the ceiling flowed quietly between them, and in its reflection neither of them appeared.
Long ago, the first imitation he had met in the Outer Wall had copied his movements without understanding why. With an uninjured body it had mimicked the posture of the wounded, lost its balance, and copied a slackened grip though it knew nothing of fatigue.
This one did not imitate.
Before Alucard could draw his sword, the copy's right hand moved first. The heavy blade left its sheath with a low hum, and its left hand came up exactly to the place where the five relics rested inside his coat. It already knew the new weight that even he had not yet fully grown used to.
"Take that hand away."
There was no answer.
Doppelganger Lv.40 leapt the waterway. Its first jump rose higher than Alucard's; in midair it became a small bat, then returned to human form and brought its sword down. Instead of dodging aside, he angled up the heavy blade and let the impact slide away. The instant the two edges struck, a small dagger flashed from the other's left hand.
It was the same sequence the first copy had used against him.
Alucard remembered the sound of the wrist moving and turned his head. The dagger did not graze his cheek, but a single drop of green liquid flicked from its tip and touched his neck. His skin went cold and rigid, and poison ran down through his veins.
The copy's weapons did not merely match in shape. It had smeared the curses of the enemies he had passed upon their edges.
The moment the Doppelganger landed, it dissolved into mist and skimmed the floor. Expecting it to appear behind him, Alucard thrust backward without turning. But the mist did not return to human form; instead it coiled around his ankle and broke his balance first.
Above him came the sound of bat wings folding.
For an instant it looked as though the enemy had split in two, but the mist on the floor was only an afterimage reflected on the water. The real copy had already climbed near the ceiling and was diving with Wing Smash. Bracing on one knee, Alucard threw himself sideways, and stone and water burst up where the impact struck.
This opponent was faster than the first. More dangerous than its speed was the fact that it did not repeat the mistakes his enemy had once seen through.
Before the poison in his neck could reach his heart, Alucard slowed his breathing. The Heart of Vlad grew hot as it pushed back the curse, but he would not let the relic move his body in his place. Pressing below the wound with his right hand to slow the spread of the venom, he pushed himself up with his left.
The Doppelganger pressed at its own neck in the same pose.
Though no poison had entered that body, the skin beneath its fingers turned gray. This was no senseless mimicry. The copy was changing itself to match Alucard's condition. As he weakened, it made the same weakness in itself, as if to steal not only the flaw but the choices that flaw would force.
The two of them circled with the narrow waterway between them. The battlefield of the Reverse Caverns was split down the middle by stone pillars jutting from both walls, and in the water on the ceiling black octopi dangled their long legs. In many places, one careless step would send a foot not into water but into open air.
When Alucard lowered the point of his sword, the copy did not lower its own. Instead, its gaze moved between his right ankle, his left shoulder, and the moments when his breathing hitched. It was reading not his appearance, but his next decision.
"The castle does not remember me."
At Alucard's words, the Doppelganger spoke for the first time.
"The castle remembers what you cast away."
Even the voice was the same. Only the breath at the end of the words was missing.
When the copy opened its left hand, small fireballs sprang up around it. They were black flames, closer to his father's fire than to the bat-fire Alucard wielded. Three spread wide to block his escape, while the two in the center slowly turned and followed him.
Alucard did not cut through the first flame with his sword. A weapon steeped in darkness might absorb that same power and grow heavier for it. He became a bat and darted up over a pillar; the Doppelganger also changed into a bat, but instead of pursuing, it sent out a short pulse.
The sound wave amplified between water and stone. His wings went numb, his sense of direction wavered, and Alucard dropped back into human form. A poison-smeared blade was waiting where he would land.
He let his body unravel into mist and avoided the sword. At the same instant, the copy also became mist and entered into his own form. As the two darknesses overlapped, the boundary of which was his vanished, and memories he had never thought of flowed beneath his skin.
Lisa burning, Richter kneeling, a bat with a ring torn from its chest. And among those scenes was one memory he had never lived: Dracula opening his eyes before the throne with the five relics restored to his body, and before him a silver-haired son kneeling.
Alucard returned to human form at once. The copy regained shape in the same instant, and their shoulders collided. At close range, the Doppelganger whispered without smiling.
"The end is already inside you."
Alucard drove his forehead into the other's face. He felt the nose bone break, and the copy staggered back half a step, but no blood came. He swung the heavy blade through the opening.
The Doppelganger did not turn to mist. It caught the blade on the intact pauldron of its left shoulder.
The red marks on the Spike Breaker glowed and threw the impact back. Alucard's wrist and elbow went numb, and the sword sprang upward. The copy had restored even the armor he had lost to a complete form and was using it for defense.
In that instant Alucard saw the difference. The marks on the plate were not the pattern left by the spikes in the Catacombs. They were closer to decorations carved by the castle in imitation of their appearance, and even the order in which they glowed after returning an impact was inconsistent.
It had stolen the wounds, but not the order in which they were made.
The Doppelganger slashed horizontally. Alucard bent back to evade it and kicked the stone beneath his feet down into the waterway. In the tiny instant the copy's eyes followed the falling stone, he drove inward, presenting his bare left shoulder first.
It was a movement that deliberately offered the unguarded side. The enemy read it as a mistake and thrust its point into the wound in his shoulder.
Alucard did not evade.
The moment the blade cut flesh, he wrapped his left arm around the copy's wrist and locked it fast. Pain made his fingers tremble, but the Tooth of Vlad answered from inside his coat and strengthened his grip. He had meant not to rely on that strength, yet already the relic and his own blood were beating in the same rhythm.
The Doppelganger's other hand drew its dagger. Alucard let go of the hilt of the heavy sword, seized the enemy's armor, and hurled them both into the waterway.
The water clinging to the ceiling swallowed them from below to above. Direction inverted, hair and cloth veiled their faces, and black octopi stretched out their tentacles to coil around the nearest bodies.
The copy instantly became a bat, trying to escape the water.
Alucard did not transform. While the Holy Symbol let him endure the pressure underwater, he caught one of the other's wings in one hand. The Doppelganger knew the power of the relic he had gained in the first castle, but it had not stolen in advance his choice to remain human and fight beneath the water.
The little bat's body dissolved into mist. Closing his eyes, Alucard sent out a short pulse through the water. Echo returned faster than it would through air, rebounding between stone pillars and tentacles, and within the range where the mist was dispersing it found one point that was far too dense.
He reached there and seized the copy by the throat.
The two of them tangled back into human shape. The Doppelganger's poison-smeared sword was still buried in Alucard's shoulder, and Alucard shoved the hilt deeper so the other's hand could not break free. In the water, blood streamed upward like black threads.
The copy looked into Alucard's face and began bleeding from its own left shoulder in exactly the same way. A wound that had not existed opened beneath the plate, and red spread through the water.
Now it had not merely stolen the shape of the wound. It was copying the pain itself to read his next move.
Alucard twisted the blade lodged in his shoulder with his own hand.
Flesh tore wider, and strength drained from his left arm. The Doppelganger's eyes shook. Its own wound split open to the same depth, but it could not understand why its opponent would damage his own body further. It was searching for the next choice only within the bounds of rational survival.
Without opening his mouth underwater, Alucard looked at it. The living do not always fight to preserve wholeness. When what must be protected lies outside the body, a wound is not a result to avoid but a price paid to buy distance.
He snapped the blade embedded in his shoulder with his hand.
The vibration of breaking metal ran through both their arms. The instant the Doppelganger lost hold of the weapon with only its hilt remaining, Alucard drew out the dark vial that held the Eye of Vlad.
The copy's eyes followed the bottle. It read his purpose as protecting the five relics.
Alucard threw the vial out of the waterway.
Without hesitation, the Doppelganger became a bat and chased after it. But what lay inside the glass was not the Eye. It was a red shard of stone he had picked up from the floor before the battle. The true relic was still hidden inside his chest, between the Heart and the Rib.
That thing could not hear the pulse of the relics. It had judged what mattered only by watching what Alucard moved to protect.
The moment the copy caught the bottle outside the water, Alucard burst through the surface with a second leap. His body, ruined in one shoulder, spun at an angle, but instead of correcting the tilt he let it carry him straight to where his sword had fallen. His right hand caught the hilt of the heavy blade and tore it from the floor, and he poured the force of his turning body into the cut.
The Doppelganger threw away the bottle and blocked with its intact armor.
Alucard's blade did not strike the front of the plate, but the spaces between the glowing scars. A true Spike Breaker would have had places where it received the impact and sent it back, but the false wounds did not connect to one another. When his blade split the decorative red lines, the pauldron failed to shine and broke apart in two pieces.
The copy tried to turn to mist. Instead of pulling his sword free, Alucard drove it deeper inside the plate and pinned the center of its form. Black mist leaked from the wound, but the real pain created underwater delayed the transformation.
For the last time, the Doppelganger changed its appearance into Alucard's.
"Do you not wish to return to this form?"
Alucard gripped the hilt with both hands.
"He never came this far."
When he twisted the blade sideways, black cracks spread through the copy's chest. The perfect face split first, the red cloak unraveled into mist, and beneath the whole armor dozens of borrowed wounds opened all at once.
The Doppelganger tried to step back, but underwater its feet were imitating the posture Alucard had deliberately ruined. Never understanding why, it put its weight on the wounded left side, and in that instant its knee buckled.
Alucard tore the sword free and cut upward from chest to shoulder.
The copy's body did not split in two; it folded like a thin shadow. The same face tilted sideways and watched his eyes to the very end, but this time even its lips did not move. The black shape seeped into a crack in the floor and vanished beneath the waterway.
Only Alucard's breathing remained in the Reverse Caverns.
He dropped to one knee and pulled the broken blade from his left shoulder. Blood poured out, but the Rib's power kept his body standing, and the Heart drove back the poison and curse that remained. The Tooth made his fingers clench hard, and the Eye showed him movements approaching through the dark with excessive clarity.
Even if he tried not to accept the relics' help, his body was already responding.
Alucard tore cloth and bound the wound tightly, then drew out the true vial containing the Eye and checked it together with the other four relics. All were still there. The stone fragment in the false bottle had already lost its red gleam by the water's edge and become an ordinary pebble again.
Where the copy had vanished, a single light of life floated up. He reached out and took it, and some of his lost blood and breath returned. But the deep wound in his shoulder did not close. The strength the castle offered would only let him walk to the next battle; it would not erase the price of his choices.
A low tremor came from the wall on the far side of the cavern. The central clock, which had stood still since the five relics were gathered, ticked forward again by one notch, and from another direction came the overlapping sounds of three old weapons.
The crack of a whip against stone, the sound of ice splitting, the sound of something running on all fours across the ceiling.
Alucard knew those sounds. They resembled the sounds Trevor, Sypha, and Grant had made in memory, but in every beat they lacked the hesitation of living people.
He turned his steps away from the path leading toward the castle's center. Shaft would already know that the five relics had been gathered. That was why he did not hurry more. If he stood before his father while leaving false heroes at his back, the castle would use the faces of the past to send the next blade into him from behind.
On the ceiling of the passage leading out of the cavern, three shadows hung upside down.
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