[Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Novel Episode 12] The Fountain of Blood and the Vampire Who Set Down His Glass
His fingertips disappeared first.
Alucard stood deep within the Long Library, before the bars that had forced him to turn back once before. Cold air slipped through the narrow iron rods, and beyond them the room held a scent thinner than that of books—a scent of night. Before, the gap had been too narrow for a body. Not even a sword could be properly inserted, and the edge of his cloak would have caught. Back then, the castle had shown him the road and made him turn away.
This time was different.
He did not hold his breath. The sensation of Form of Mist was no longer entirely foreign. To loosen the boundary of bone and flesh, to let clothing, sword, and shadow briefly unravel. Stay too long, and strength drains from the body; but to pass through these bars, he did not need long. Alucard extended his left hand. His fingertips blurred. The black leather of his glove loosened like smoke, and wrist, elbow, and shoulder lost their shape in turn.
The cold of the iron bars passed through his entire body.
No flesh tore. No metal caught his clothing. Instead, the outline called himself thinned like cloth, split apart, then joined again on the other side of the bars. Alucard recovered his form with one knee slightly bent. The instant his foot touched the floor, weight returned. Sword, cloak, the low pressure of Walk Armor—all of it was back in place.
He opened and closed his hand.
His fingers were fingers.
But the bars were now behind him.
A blue darkness floated inside the small room. It flickered like flame but gave no light, and gathered like a jewel without seeming solid. As he approached, it briefly formed the image of folded wings, then returned to a round shadow. The feeling of countless bats hidden between bookshelves suddenly pricking up their ears spread through the room.
Alucard reached out.
The relic touched his shadow before it touched his palm. The end of the shadow stretched long across the floor split into thin strands. The sensation was not unpleasant. It was not that his body grew smaller; rather, it folded according to another law. Heat flashed between his shoulder blades, and the skin at the nape of his neck tightened with cold. His vision seemed to lower and rise at once, while sound informed him of the room’s size before sight could.
Soul of Bat.
The name spread inside his body like the beat of wings.
Alucard braced one hand against the wall. The moment a new power enters is never quiet. Jewel of Open had taught him to recognize doors. Leap Stone had shown him the second rhythm in the air. Holy Symbol had pushed away the hostility of water. Form of Mist had loosened the boundary of his body. This one was older than all of them. Not the body that looks up at the night sky from below, but the body that chooses its direction within the night sky.
He exhaled slowly.
The next moment, his body folded.
There was no sound of bones breaking. No pain of flesh shrinking. The black surface of his cloak widened first, then narrowed into two wings. His arms did not vanish. They folded at another angle. The weight of his sword faded with him, and the metal pressure of Walk Armor entered the shadow. The floor once touched by human feet drew away. Table legs, candlesticks, and the corners of fallen books suddenly looked far too large.
The dust near the ceiling was clear.
Alucard beat his wings.
The first attempt was not graceful. Because he believed too late in the lightness of his body, he tilted close to the wall. The edge of one wing brushed a shelf corner, scattering several dry pages. He immediately lowered his posture. A bat’s body does not choose direction by force the way a human arm does. It reads the thin gaps in the air, yields to the smallest tremor, then gathers itself again.
The second wingbeat was better.
He circled the room once. Sound had changed. Instead of footsteps, short ripples inside his ears drew the walls. The heat of candles, gaps between shelves, the cold path flowing beyond the bars. A world heard before it was seen. Yet it was not complete. When darkness became too deep, this sense alone would not be enough. Some rooms deceive both eyes and wings. He had already seen such a room in the spiked passage of the Catacombs.
He returned to human form.
Weight settled into his shoulders and knees. Though the transformation had lasted only briefly, strength had drained from him. A new power always opens a road and gives warning at the same time. It could carry him farther. But even a body that goes farther eventually tires.
Alucard returned beyond the bars. This time, not as mist, but by briefly taking the form of a bat and passing through the low gap. The two methods were different. Mist is a body that cannot be grasped; a bat is a body that changes direction before it can be grasped. The castle would demand both.
The books of the Long Library watched him in silence.
From the old librarian’s chamber came no sound. No clink of coins, no turning of pages. Yet Alucard did not look toward the door. Now it was not the room of trade that called him, but the upper chambers. The sound of a glass being set down, first heard after he left the corpse chamber. The scent of old perfume and wine mixed with blood. It was neither grave, nor mine, nor beast’s den.
An aristocrat’s room.
He left the library.
The castle did not grow brighter as it rose. The catacombs below threatened with darkness; the corridors above deceived with light. The marble of the Marble Gallery still gleamed coldly, and in the high ceiling of the central clock room, unseen gears turned slowly. Alucard passed through for a moment. The heights that could not be reached before Leap Stone, the blue doors unopened before Jewel of Open, the gaps barred before Form of Mist—all of them rearranged their positions inside his body.
Roads no longer existed only on floors.
He headed through the high left passage of the clock room toward Olrox’s Quarters. Before, he had only stepped into the edge of that region and turned back. Vertical spaces opening upward, holes in the ceiling, black shafts that could only be stared at from below. Now he climbed as far as human feet allowed, then folded his body as though folding his cloak.
Wings opened.
This time he did not strike the wall. He rose slowly through the long vertical passage. With every wingbeat, the wall sconces descended beneath him. Narrow ledges holding glass bottles, small rooms scented with old medicine, urns hidden among broken ornaments passed by. Flight not yet familiar made him cautious. Climb too quickly, and the ceiling is seen too late; climb too slowly, and the wings learn fatigue first.
He landed on a middle ledge and returned to human form.
Hammer and Blade stood in the corridor.
The two giants carried different weapons and shared the same silence. One let a massive hammer hang toward the floor; the other rested a long blade upon his shoulder. Their armor was not decoration but weight. Whenever they moved, metal rang from within. As Alucard stepped forward, both turned their heads at once.
The hammer came first.
The attack that struck the floor was not only meant to hit. It was force meant to shake the stone and slow the next evasion. Alucard did not jump backward just before the hammer fell. If he retreated, Blade’s long weapon would be waiting. He went forward. Into the narrow space between hammer haft and arm, the dull opening made before a huge enemy can recover his own strength. Gladius entered that gap.
From inside the metal came the sound of flesh being cut.
As Hammer sank to one knee, Blade thrust. Alucard rose into the air with the rhythm of the Leap Stone. First leap, then second. The sword point passed beneath his feet and tore a portrait on the wall. He landed behind Blade’s shoulder and made a short thrust, severing a joint in the armor. The giant tilted sideways.
The two enemies did not endure long.
Yet even after they fell, the corridor did not seem safe. This place carried a scent stronger than that of battle: perfume. A place where fragrance had been used to hide blood. No—not hide it. Use even the smell of blood as part of the fragrance. Alucard touched Mormegil’s hilt once. The black sword gave off no black light. It existed by refusing to accept light.
A little farther on, the space suddenly opened.
It was a broad chamber, almost like a courtyard. The ceiling was high, and the rear windows cut long strips of night sky into the room. At the center stood a fountain. A marble angel tilted a vessel, and beneath it clear water rested quietly. At first. When Alucard took a few more steps, a dark color spread beneath the surface.
Red.
Slowly at first, then faster, as though drawing breath. The clear water changed from within into something like blood. The fountain’s stream still fell softly, but the sound it made upon striking below grew heavier than water should. The angel’s face was clean, and that cleanliness made it more ominous. Red water ran from its fingertips, drawing thin lines beneath its wings.
Alucard stopped before the fountain.
It was not the smell of blood. It was an imitation older than true blood, red liquid stripped of a living body’s warmth. This castle sometimes fails to distinguish between symbol and corpse. A sacred form pours water, water imitates blood, and the one who passes beside it is forced to ask which is the greater desecration.
The upper-left door waited for him.
He passed the fountain and climbed the stairs. Behind him, the red water continued to fall. A steady rhythm. It resembled the sound of a glass touching a table. Following that sound as it grew nearer, the corridor narrowed, and the decorations on the walls grew more delicate. Unlike other ruined parts of the castle, the ornaments here looked as though someone had still been polishing them. The gilding of the portraits had not peeled away, and dust along the window frames was thin. It was not an abandoned room.
It was a waiting room.
Alucard stopped before the yellow door.
From inside came no footsteps.
He pushed the door open.
A long dining table crossed the center of the room. Chairs stood on either side, their backs raised like blank faces. The candles burned low. The windows were tall and narrow, and stained glass showed saints and angels. Yet even under light, the faces in the colored glass did not warm. They seemed to have been watching what would soon happen in this room for a very long time.
At the end of the table sat a man.
He did not rise in haste. He showed no sign of surprise. His long garment was excessively orderly, and his fingers rested very lightly around the stem of a glass. His face was pale, but not rotten. His eyes were calmer than those of the living. In the gaze he turned toward Alucard, courtesy appeared before caution. Yet that courtesy did not belong to a host greeting a guest. It was closer to the order observed before prey is placed upon the table.
At the opposite end stood an empty chair.
An invitation.
Alucard did not sit.
He walked along the side of the table. His footfalls stretched long, then disappeared between the candles. The man set down his glass. It was a very small sound. But it was the very sound that had drifted down through the upper darkness after the corpse chamber closed behind him. Alucard moved his hand not toward Gladius, but toward Mormegil. The air of this room was closer to shadow than light, and so were the eyes of its master.
The black blade was drawn.
In that instant, the man disappeared.
The chair remained. The glass remained. Only the body that had occupied it had moved to the other side of the room in the time it took the candles to flicker once. Before turning, Alucard felt the air change beneath his feet. Black pillars rose from below the floor.
They were shadows shaped like screams.
They were not true pillars, but forms of darkness ripping upward from the floor. Alucard leapt a moment too late. He avoided the first pillar, but the second grazed the side of Walk Armor. The metal turned ice-cold, then trembled hot. He climbed onto the table and regained his balance. Several chairs toppled backward.
Olrox floated in the air on the far side of the room.
His feet did not touch the floor. Blue skulls were born from his fingertips. They did not seem made of flame, but as if magic had borrowed the shape of death. Small lights burned inside their eye sockets, and their jaws opened without sound. They did not fly straight at Alucard. They circled slowly, clinging to his path. If he dodged, they followed; if he stopped, they closed in.
At the same time, purple bats spilled from within Olrox’s sleeves.
The bats did not fly like natural bats. They moved as if suspended from a spell rather than driven by wings. Too straight, too regular. Alucard ran across the dining table. When one skull blocked his path, he cut it with Mormegil. The black blade swallowed the blue light, but soon stopped dully. It felt as though darkness recognized darkness, yet could not cut deeply into it.
A mistake.
He had misread Olrox’s first form. This vampire’s magic did not fear darkness. It wore darkness around itself. Mormegil’s weight pulled his wrist inward. Alucard sheathed it and drew Gladius. A short and familiar blade. Not splendid, but one that did not lie about distance or rhythm.
Olrox raised one hand.
A violet flash shot from his fingertips. Alucard lowered himself beneath the table. The flash blew away a candlestick. Flames fell onto the cloth, and a small fire caught on the white table covering. Yet before the blaze could spread, a blue skull passed through it and lost color. There was a smell of magic and fire devouring one another.
Alucard emerged from beneath the table and leapt left.
Olrox vanished whenever Alucard came close and summoned creatures whenever distance opened between them. If Alucard held the center of the room, shadow pillars rose from the floor; if he was driven near the wall, bats blocked his retreat. The pattern was not quick, but it was elegant. The method of one who does not hurry the hunt. He attacked as though giving his guest time, and with each such moment, the room tilted a little more toward Olrox.
Alucard cut the first skull and ducked beneath the second. The third opened its jaw from behind. He rose into the air with the Leap Stone and cleared the candlesticks. But Olrox had already seen that position. This time, not a pillar of darkness from the floor, but a violet wave rose toward the air. Alucard could not evade it. The impact struck his chest. Walk Armor rang, and he fell onto the table.
Plates broke.
They had been empty for a long time. Yet the sound they made while shattering was as clear as that of a living meal. Alucard immediately rolled away. Olrox raised another pillar where he had fallen. The table split from below, throwing up fragments of wood. Through the splinters, Alucard reached out and seized a candlestick. Not to use it as a weapon, but to pull himself sideways and change direction.
The swarm of bats passed by.
As he rose, he swung Gladius in a short arc. Several bats dissolved into purple dust against the blade. One skull closed in from the right. Alucard drove the sword point into its eye socket. Light burst and burned the back of his hand. He did not retreat. Olrox was about to vanish again.
This time, Alucard followed.
Before the vampire disappeared, the candle flames leaned in one direction. The scent of perfume in the air moved for a fraction of a moment. Alucard trusted his skin and nose more than his eyes. The instant Olrox’s body reappeared on the right side of the room, he was already running there. The distance was close. For the first time, Gladius touched not the hem of Olrox’s garment, but flesh.
A pale hand split open.
For the first time, courtesy vanished from Olrox’s face.
He floated backward and opened his hand. The whole floor rang low. Shadow pillars rose not in a single line, but in several rows. Alucard saw the spaces between them. They looked like a solid wall, but between pillar and pillar existed narrow gaps. He entered one. The edge of his cloak brushed the darkness and stiffened as if frozen, but his body passed through. The skulls following him crashed against the pillars and shattered.
Olrox fired a violet flash.
This time, Alucard did not dodge. He raised his sword and let the center of the flash slide away along the blade. The impact climbed from wrist to shoulder. His fingers numbed. But the direction of the light shifted by half a beat. In that half beat, Alucard entered. The first cut took the arm. The second, the chest. The third, beneath the neck.
Gladius split pale flesh.
Olrox withdrew. Blood came out. It was not red. It was too dark. Like old wine pouring from a wound. He staggered and sank down at the end of the room. All the candles lowered at once. The bats, skulls, and shadow pillars vanished for a moment.
Alucard held his sword low.
It was not over.
Olrox’s shoulders swelled strangely. His once calm face tore from within. Cloth burst first, and beneath it the human form could no longer contain the human shape. Fingers lengthened, arms thickened, and the spine rose upward. The mouth opened until it occupied half the face. Beneath the pale skin, green scalelike flesh pushed outward. The chair at the end of the table slid back and overturned, and the saints in the stained glass wavered inside fractured light.
The monster stood.
A gigantic green, lizardlike form. Yet too much ancient intelligence remained inside its eyes to call it a mere beast. Olrox no longer floated through the air with elegance. Instead, one step covered half the room. Each time his foot struck the floor, the stone rang. His long arm struck the table. Wood shattered all at once. Plates, candlesticks, and chair fragments flew through the room.
The first attack was a fist.
Alucard dodged sideways. The fist passed through where he had stood and struck the floor, shaking his ankles with the impact. He immediately moved in and cut the torso. Gladius passed over the scales. It left a wound, but a shallow one. The monster’s body was broad and hard. To cut deeply, he would need time.
No time was given.
Olrox’s head descended. His mouth opened. Not flame, but light emerged first. A white line swept across the floor. Alucard tried to avoid it, but the light itself did not burn him. The next moment, the floor where the light had touched exploded. Flames rose late. He had misread the timing of the blast. His body was thrown backward, and the leg plates of Walk Armor heated sharply.
He rolled across the floor.
Fire caught the edge of his cloak. Alucard did not slap it out with his hand, but rolled once more to smother it. Use the hand, and the fingers come late. The monster did not miss the opening. One long arm came down to crush him. Alucard folded into the body of a bat.
This time it was not a choice, but reflex.
As the fist broke the floor, a small black body rose above the shockwave. Yet the new power was not fully his. The hot air shook his wings, and his direction veered wide. Olrox’s second arm raked through the air. The tips of the claws grazed close to his wing. Alucard immediately returned to human form. Fly too long, and he would be caught. The air in this room was wide, but the monster’s arms erased that width quickly.
He landed behind a broken piece of the dining table.
Olrox opened his mouth again. This time, fireballs emerged. The first few were slow. They bounced dully along the floor and rolled forward. Alucard passed between them. But when the wounded monster lowered his body, the speed of the fireballs changed. They shot out in succession like small suns, sweeping through the center of the room. Broken table fragments caught fire.
Alucard leapt upward.
With the first leap, he passed over one fireball; with the second, he reached the height of the monster’s shoulder. He aimed for the head, but Olrox turned. The blade only grazed beneath the jaw. The monster’s arm came from the side. There was no room to evade. He took the impact with his left arm. Walk Armor rang. His body flew toward the wall and struck it.
His breath was cut off.
The moment he fell to the floor, his hand moved toward Mormegil. A heavier sword. Perhaps it could cut deeper. But as soon as his fingers touched the hilt, he stopped. The problem was weight. This form of Olrox was slow, but the range of his attacks was broad. During the time required for one heavy swing, the floor would erupt again, and fireballs would close the path of retreat.
He kept Gladius in his grip.
A short sword could not split the torso. Then he would not strike the torso.
Olrox’s light begins in the mouth. After the light sweeps the floor, the explosion comes half a beat later. The fireballs emerge only after the throat moves deeply. The fist is preceded by the shoulder, not the foot. The head lowers just after an attack. That is when it is closest. Only in that brief moment are the eyes, neck, and inside of the mouth open.
Alucard stepped into the center of the room.
He did not flee.
Olrox opened his mouth toward him. White light scraped the floor. Alucard watched the light and did not move. The light itself was not the wound. He had to read where the explosion would come. He saw the end of the mark left by the light and moved half a step to the left. The first explosion rose behind him. The second burst to his right. The third blocked the front. He ran through the heated air between them.
The monster’s head lowered.
He jumped. First leap. The monster’s jaw came before his eyes. Second leap. His body rose once more in midair. Olrox lifted his head and tried to spit fireballs. Alucard briefly folded his human body into a bat. The first row of fireballs passed beneath him. He smelled the edge of his wing burn. He immediately returned to human form.
The sword came down.
Gladius split the flesh above Olrox’s right eye. The monster roared. The roar carried not flame but blood and heat. Alucard was pushed back by the recoil, but he reached out and seized the space between the monster’s scales. His palm slipped. He gripped again. This time his nails sank into flesh.
Still clinging, he stabbed a second time.
Beneath the neck.
The monster shook his body. Wall and ceiling alternated in Alucard’s sight. He lowered his shoulder to keep from falling. Olrox raised one arm to scrape him away. Just before the claws reached him, Alucard let go. As he fell, he became mist. The claws tore empty smoke, and he gathered his body again beneath the monster’s arm.
The floor was hot.
Olrox opened his mouth. This time he was close. The light came straight down toward him. There was almost no space to avoid it. Alucard stepped forward. Too close. Close enough to see the darkness inside the mouth before the light swept the floor. Alucard gripped the sword with both hands. His left hand had not fully recovered, but this time he needed it.
The light gathered.
He thrust.
The sword point pierced the inside of the mouth. The light trembled, unable to burst. Olrox’s head bent backward. Alucard did not pull out the sword; he turned his body sideways. The blade cut through the inside of the mouth and into the throat. The monster’s roar was blocked for an instant. The blocked sound was more terrible. A scream unable to escape shook the entire body.
Olrox retreated.
His massive foot crushed the broken dining table. Wood splintered, and a candlestick scattered its final flame. Alucard followed. This time he did not wait. The monster tried to use light again. But because of the wound inside his mouth, the beam leaked to one side. The floor explosions went wrong. Flames rose behind Alucard.
He leapt with that heat at his back.
The first cut beneath the jaw. The second at the same place in the neck. The third deeper. Because Gladius was short, he had to press almost against the monster’s chest. Olrox’s arms came down as if to embrace him. If caught, it would end. With the force of the Leap Stone, Alucard drove his body upward. At the instant the arms closed on empty air, he cleared them.
In midair, he became a bat again.
One beat.
His wings skimmed over the monster’s head. The next moment, he returned to human form and set his sword downward. He placed all the force of his fall into the tip. Gladius pierced the scales near the crown of Olrox’s head. The blade caught on bone. Alucard did not let go. His knee struck the monster’s head, and his wrist shook as if it might break.
He drove the hilt down to the end.
Bone split.
Olrox screamed, shaking the entire room. This time it was neither the voice of an aristocrat nor the roar of a monster. It was the sound of humiliation hidden inside the body for long ages being forced outward all at once. He took two steps forward. On the third, his knees gave way.
Alucard leapt backward.
Olrox’s gigantic body began to collapse. First, the green flesh split. It peeled away like a shell and fell. Beneath it, a skeleton was revealed. The immense frame of bone still moved. Though the flesh had vanished, it took two more steps toward Alucard. It had no mouth, yet its jawbone opened and closed. As though hatred outlasted flesh.
Light descended from the ceiling.
It was too cold to be called holy light, too quiet to be called demonic fire. It drew Olrox’s skeleton upward. The bones separated one by one. Fingers, arms, ribs, spine. They rose and shattered as they were pulled up. Last of all, the skull seemed to look down at Alucard. There was nothing in its eye sockets, yet that emptiness still imitated courtesy.
The light vanished.
So did the bones.
Only the broken dining table, shattered glass, and scorched floor remained in the room. Most of the candles had gone out. One survivor trembled faintly, casting a long shadow on the wall. Alucard lowered his sword. His wrist tingled, and a shallow wound from the monster’s claws marked his shoulder. Walk Armor was scorched in places, but still held his body.
A small light floated at the center of the room.
A glow like a vessel of life. Alucard accepted it. His blood moved deeply once within him, and his breath grew a little longer. Yet the smell of perfume did not disappear. Blood, wine, old cloth. Even after its master vanished, the room did not easily abandon his tastes.
The glass at the end of the table had not broken.
Alucard looked at it for a moment. Nothing remained inside. Yet the darkness within the glass seemed deeper than elsewhere. He did not reach for it. In this castle, an empty glass sometimes demands more than a full one.
Wind descended from the upper left side of the room.
It was a path unseen before the battle. Or perhaps a path that would not have been reachable even if seen. Alucard wiped his sword, sheathed it, and folded his body. The shape of a bat wrapped around him again. Passing low over the ruined table, he rose toward the high left passage of the room. Fatigue from the battle made each wingbeat heavy, but the road was clear.
There was a small chamber.
It had no decoration. Only one relic floated faintly in its center. Its shape was indistinct. At first it seemed like an ear. The next moment, like a ripple. As he approached, the inside of Alucard’s ears reacted first. A very low sound. Not so much heard as felt, a vibration touching the space between bone and air.
Echo of Bat.
He returned to human form and reached out.
As the relic seeped into his palm, the walls of the room briefly appeared in another way. Not as lines seen by the eye, but as distances reached and returned by sound. The thickness of stone, the height of the ceiling, the hollow beneath the floor. He exhaled softly. That breath seemed to touch the wall and come back. To the dark map possessed by the bat’s body, ripples had now been added.
Alucard thought of the spiked passage in the Catacombs.
Blades that could not be seen. Darkness so deep even the point of a sword seemed unable to reach it. A path that had been a wager with Form of Mist alone. Now it would still be dangerous, but it would no longer be a darkness without speech. Sound makes walls speak. Blades, gaps, sealed ceilings. Where the castle steals sight, the ear unfolds another map.
But he did not return there immediately.
When he left Olrox’s chamber, he heard again the red fountain in the great room. The water that had turned bloodlike was still falling. Even after its master’s death, the red did not immediately clear. Alucard passed before the fountain without stopping. The angel still bowed its head, and red water flowed from its fingertips to the floor.
He traveled through the long vertical passage and climbed toward the upper floors.
Flight had grown a little more familiar. But gaining wings did not make the castle’s heights shrink. Rather, more doors appeared above. Ledges he had ignored because they could not be reached, cracks near the ceiling, high windows where outside air came and went. The more abilities he gained, the less the castle narrowed. It merely turned more of its hidden faces toward him.
When he landed on one ledge, he heard metal gears meshing in the distance.
The sound was very regular. It was neither a prayer bell nor the sound of a glass on a table. Colder, more persistent. A motion that seemed to chew time into small pieces. Through it passed something like the cry of crows. Not one. The sound of many black wings changing direction at once somewhere high above.
Alucard looked that way.
Inside his cloak, Mormegil still swallowed light, and Gladius was slowly losing the heat of the battle just fought. Soul of Bat pulsed faintly between his shoulder blades, and Echo of Bat drew invisible circles deep within his ears.
Above the castle, gears meshed once more.
Following that sound, the crows in the darkness rose into flight.
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