[Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Novel – Episode 13] Where Ravens Hide Time
The sound of iron chewing iron rose without pause from the darkness beneath the ledge.
Alucard remained still while vibrations passed through the wall and scratched faintly across his breastplate. Other regions of the castle ran with water or breathed through the throats of the dead, but the Clock Tower fed every moment between its teeth and ground it to pieces. Whenever gears of different sizes met in clashing rhythms, stone dust and the smell of old oil mingled with the cold wind.
The perfume and wine that had filled Olrox’s rooms could not follow him here. Gaps too narrow to be called windows opened in every wall, and the night that entered through them revealed neither star nor cloud. It pressed between the mechanisms like another wall. With one hand resting near his waist, Alucard first studied the speed of the moving platforms and the enormous teeth meshing beneath them.
A raven perched on a gear turned its head. Its eyes followed his wrist with unnatural clarity. When it spread its wings, dozens more concealed in the dark launched themselves at once. The first flock crossed his face to sever his sight; the next came low for throat and hands. They did not mean merely to tear flesh. With beak and talon they nudged his direction little by little, herding his feet toward the edge of a moving metal plate.
Alucard did not retreat. He slid half a step sideways, and the short blade familiar to his hand cut through the black feathers. Darkness like dust scattered instead of blood. The dead bird unraveled like torn cloth before it reached the floor, but the others filled its place without hesitation.
Just before the first platform withdrew into the wall, he drove off its metal edge and crossed to a lower plate. A massive gear rose below, its teeth locking with another. He cleared it with his first leap and found the hidden second foothold in the air, catching a high railing with one hand. A raven seized the end of his cloak. Rather than look back, he folded the fabric into his left hand and pulled. As the cloak wrapped close around his body and slipped free of the beak, the blade rising in his other hand quietly divided the unbalanced bird.
Rows of smaller gears had been set into the wall of the upper passage. Some stood still, some spun without purchase, and their surfaces were layered with old marks of impact. Alucard tapped the nearest gear lightly with the back of his sword. The wall swallowed two dull notes. Only the third, thin and clear, traveled into its depths.
A mechanism locked far away began to move. Nothing changed on the visible surface, but the Echo of Bat answered within his ears and traced the hollow route the sound had taken. In the same fashion, he found other devices within the wall and brought their rhythms into alignment. Some roads in this castle opened to the ear before the eye.
Where the passage ended, Alucard folded into the small body of night. Heat rising from below lifted his wings more sharply than expected, while the wind displaced by the gears drove him toward the opposite wall. Resistance only widened his course. He selected the narrow boundary where hot updraft met cold air from outside and flew low along it.
Severed heads drifted through the vertical shaft in undulating paths. Hair tangled into serpents made a sound like metal scraping metal, while eyes cold as stone tracked the small wings. He let the first pass beneath him, but the second curved inward farther than he expected. In this body he could not use a sword.
Alucard resumed human form in midair. Weight returned, and he began to fall at once. In that brief interval, the drawn blade cut through serpentine hair and face together. Before the bottomless dark could pull him down, he regained his wings, and the force of arrested descent wrenched roughly between his shoulder blades.
A red light flickered in a small chamber to the right. The flame suspended within did not burn its surroundings, but it heated the inner surfaces of his wings as he approached. Alucard landed in human shape and extended one hand. When the Fire of Bat entered his shadow, it opened a path of heat where the body of night resided.
A form that found its way through darkness did not readily accept a flame that pushed darkness back. The two natures struck one another for a moment behind his shoulders, making the candles in the chamber stream in time with his breathing. Alucard checked that his fingertips bore no wound, then returned to the noise of the machines.
As he searched for more embedded gears and changed their resonance, Harpies descended from above. The winged creatures wore imitations of human faces. Laughing, they occupied the air over the platforms and waited for the instant he jumped before turning their talons downward. He read the first assault too late. Metal screamed beneath their claws along his shoulder; his posture broke, and one foot slipped into empty air. Below, interlocking teeth waited with slow certainty.
He seized a small projection in the wall. Oil and dust made his fingertips slide. When the Harpy descended again, he did not struggle to hold on but released himself. His falling shape folded into a bat, and the claws closed upon empty air. Instead of fleeing, the little body passed beneath the enemy and breathed fire for the first time.
The new flame wavered rather than flying straight, yet it was enough to catch the ends of the wings. The smell of burning feathers spread with the creature’s shriek. As the Harpy tipped sideways, Alucard recovered human weight and aligned his blade beneath him. Split between shoulder and chest, the enemy fell onto a moving platform. The plate withdrew into the wall, taking it down into the gears’ roar.
After he landed, breath returned half a beat late. Ash, not blood, coated his tongue. Without pausing for a deeper breath, he measured the speed of the next platform and went on.
Sword Lords stood in the deeper passage. Whether any body remained within the worn armor was impossible to tell, but death had not made them forget the reach of the thrusts they had learned in life. Alucard deflected the first attack to one side, then cut through the elbow joint and neck in succession. Helmet and body collapsed, but the weapon in its hand did not fall.
A faint shadow wound itself around the hilt. Bereft of its master, the blade turned of its own accord and aimed for his chest. A weapon without wrist or eye could not be startled by a feint or driven back by fear. Alucard drew the heavier sword but did not meet it head-on. As the floating blade passed his side, he entered by half a step and pressed its center downward from above.
The two metals met without a clear ring. A dull rupture sounded beneath the sword that swallowed light, and the Vandal Sword fell to the floor, never to move again. Alucard put away the heavy blade at once. However strong the answer, repeating it for every question would dull the wrist and judgment alike.
At the end of the passage, enormous iron pendulums swung from side to side. Their rhythm differed slightly from the gears behind them: the eye always promised enough time to cross, while the ear knew a single moment would be missing. Alucard listened to the paths drawn by their echoes, then ran behind the first weight. The second passed close enough to stir his hair. Before the third, which feigned a late return, a Medusa Head drifted up and blocked his sight.
If he stopped to cut it down, the iron mass would return. He slipped beneath the head in the body of a bat and recovered human form upon the platform opposite. The pendulum struck the wall directly behind him. Stone dust fell like rain, revealing a low door.
The air beyond smelled not of a scattered flock but of an army waiting for a command. Alucard flexed his empty left hand once and stepped inside.
The battle chamber rose so high that its ceiling was invisible. Machinery along both walls interlocked with broken ornament until the two seemed part of one body. The floor sank toward the center, and beyond the shattered railings came the ceaseless turning of gears. To be driven back here would not end with the impact of a wall.
When Alucard reached the center, a single black feather fell from the ceiling. Just before touching the floor, it changed direction like a sliver of metal, grazed his cheek, and struck the wall hard enough to draw a narrow crack. Then vast wings opened, and Karasuman descended from the darkness.
Gold ornaments remained upon a body that mixed raven and man, and arrogant mockery twisted the beaked face. When he raised one arm, ravens hidden along walls, ceiling, and beneath the railings burst out together and formed a black ring. Alucard charged the center before the flock could disperse.
The judgment was swift and wrong. The ravens were not a shield protecting their master. Before his point could reach them, the entire ring exploded outward, filling the space inside his weapon’s reach with beaks and claws. His hand tore open and his cloak pulled tight behind him as Karasuman rose. Feathers shed from the broad wings straightened into blades.
Alucard rolled beneath the first rank, but the second lodged in the armor over his thigh. Even as the interruption broke his stride, he planted a hand on the floor, rose, and watched where his enemy positioned himself to summon the next flock. He gathered ravens into a circle and burst them outward, then dropped feathers through the blinded space. At close range he escaped upward; at a distance, the flock narrowed every retreat. The cramped floor belonged to the intruder, but the broad air above had always been Karasuman’s battlefield.
Alucard did not try to seize it directly. He became a bat and crossed the room close to the floor. The ravens poured down like a black wave. His small body found the gaps between them, though several claws raked the tips of his wings. Karasuman lowered himself as if he had been waiting for that exact approach and set the long feathers of one arm like spears.
Alucard rose sharply over the arm’s path and breathed fire. The ball of flame missed the master but tore through the ravens gathered on his left. Within the opening made by their burning bodies, Alucard recovered human form and joined both leaps, climbing beneath his enemy to cut the underside of one wing.
Black feathers fell. Every raven in the chamber cried at once. Their voices struck the walls and returned, confusing direction and pushing his landing toward the railing. The instant his toes touched stone, Alucard stepped backward. One pace farther and he would have fallen into the darkness of the gears.
Wounded, Karasuman changed the shape of his attack. Instead of gathering the flock in one place, he descended in short passes to scatter feathered spears, then climbed again. Ravens massed on one side of the room and advanced as a single wave. Alucard jumped over the first and ducked beneath the second, but the third sealed above and below at once.
He passed through it as mist. Beaks and talons could not seize the dispersed shape, yet his knees folded with exhaustion the moment his body returned. Karasuman did not waste that brief weakness. He concentrated every feather blade upon the same point.
To roll aside was to meet the railing. Standing his ground, Alucard let the first blade slide along his sword, surrendered a little cloth at the shoulder to the second, and turned the third past his body. As stone cracked around the feathers embedded in the floor, he reconsidered not the attacks, but the instant the orders were given.
When Karasuman summoned the ravens, his wings spread wide, exposing chest and throat. Charging then brought the same exploding flock that had caught Alucard before. The true opening came after the birds burst apart, in the instant their master folded his wings to climb to the next height.
Alucard waited at the center of the room as though prepared to repeat his first mistake. Karasuman raised an arm. Ravens streamed from ceiling and walls and formed a black ring. When it swelled fully and exploded outward, Alucard did not run forward. Two leaps took him above it. Wings and beaks tangled beneath his feet; those few birds that tried to turn were already too late.
The heavy blade steeped in darkness descended through the gap before Karasuman’s wings could close. Shoulder, wing joint, and the hollow beneath the neck split along one path. The enemy beat his wings to throw him off, but Alucard changed into a small bat and flowed sideways with the blast instead of resisting it. Driven toward the wall, he regained human feet upon a narrow projection that could not bear him for long.
Karasuman layered the surviving ravens into one enormous spear. As his strength failed, the dominion that had oppressed the whole chamber narrowed into a crude attempt to pierce a single point. The wall sealed Alucard’s right side, and it was too late to begin another transformation. Mist might carry him through, but the master would cover the place where his body returned.
Alucard sheathed the heavy sword and brought the quicker blade back to hand. Beaks, feathers, and claws approached as a single black point. He waited to the final instant. Strike too soon and the flock would divide around him to bite again; too late and it would pass through his chest. When the smell of wings reached his face, he drew a short arc from below.
The raven spear divided down its center and streamed past on either side. Several cuts opened along his arm and shoulder, but a road appeared between them. Beyond it, Karasuman descended in person, dragging his wounded wing.
Alucard drove off the wall and stepped upon the second foothold in the air. A feather spear tore the metal at his side but only twisted his body. At the single point where opposing descent and ascent met, the short blade entered the split beneath the golden ornament. He did not thrust with the wrist. He placed the forward force of his whole body behind the steel and drove it deeper.
Karasuman’s cry broke off, and every raven in the chamber fell silent with it. The two bodies dropped almost together. Alucard landed, rolled aside, and pulled his blade free. His enemy struck the center of the room on both knees, then spread his wings once more. The feathers that fell behind him were no longer weapons that could split stone, only light remnants slipping from a dead bird.
The beaked mouth opened for one final command, but none came. The feathers became dust first; the golden ornaments made a small sound upon the floor. Then the outlines of flesh and bone dissolved into darkness. A few ravens remained near the ceiling before scattering. For the brief interval after command had vanished, they became birds again.
The light of life rose at the center of the chamber, cooling the heat of his wounds and allowing his breath to lengthen. The torn armor and cuts across his hand remained, but strength sufficient to reach the next room returned. A door opened to the left. The grind of gears faded, and cold air entered from a great height.
On that wind lingered the faint scent of a flower pressed long ago between the pages of a book. It was not the fragrance of a living garden, but a smell made by someone remembering a room that had been lost.
Alucard cleaned and sheathed his weapon, then entered the open door. Behind him, one black feather fell late, its sound swallowed by the gears before it touched the floor. Ahead, the soft voice of a woman slipped through the border of a nameless dream.
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