[Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Novel – Episode 12] The Room of the Man Who Set Down His Glass
The fingertips he extended between the iron bars blurred like smoke.
Alucard stood deep within the Long Library, before the narrow grille that had once forced him to turn back. Its bars had admitted neither sword nor shoulder then. They had shown him only the blue light beyond and denied him passage. Now he relaxed his wrist and slowly loosened the boundaries of flesh and bone. The black leather of his glove lost its outline first; then arm and shoulder flowed into cold mist, and the chill of the iron passed through the center of his body without leaving a wound.
His weight returned all at once when he took shape on the other side. His knees bent by the smallest degree, and a low metallic note sounded inside his breastplate. He opened and closed his hand, testing whether every joint had found its proper place. The close-set bars still stood behind him, but the way they had sealed for so long was no longer a wall.
Blue darkness floated at the center of the little chamber. It flickered like a flame without illuminating anything around it, and from nearby its round glow resembled folded wings. When Alucard reached out, the relic touched the shadow on the floor before it touched his skin. The long black shape split in two and spread its wings. At the same instant, a hot pulse traveled between his shoulder blades.
Soul of Bat.
The name came in no one’s voice. It rose with the new sensation, as though the night air inside him had recovered a memory of its own. Alucard steadied one hand against the wall and brought his breathing under control. The Jewel of Open had taught him to recognize sealed doors; the Leap Stone, the second foothold hidden in midair. Mist briefly removed the body that could be caught. This new power was unlike any of them. It felt less like the ability to leave the ground than an instinct for choosing, in darkness, which direction would be up.
As he exhaled, his cloak spread wide behind him and folded into a pair of wings. His arms and legs did not vanish so much as turn inward, taking new directions within a smaller body, while the weight at his waist disappeared into shadow. The floor abruptly receded. Table legs and candlesticks rose like towers around him.
His first wingbeat was too strong. The small body veered toward the wall, and when a wingtip brushed the corner of a bookcase, dry pages scattered like startled birds. He did not force himself upright. Instead, he followed the current into a broad half circle. Human arms changed direction through strength; this body had to read the thin difference in pressure beneath each wing. On his second turn he passed without disturbing the dust gathered near the ceiling. On the third, he slowed before the bars and hovered in place.
He heard the shape of the room before he saw it. Tiny ripples from his wings touched stone, shelves, and iron lattice, then returned at different intervals. It was not yet a complete map. In a place utterly without light, he would need another sense capable of sending those ripples farther. The darkness of the spikes he had seen in the Catacombs scraped faintly across his memory.
Alucard resumed human form and rolled one shoulder. The flight had been brief, yet fatigue remained where the wings had been. The new power opened a sealed road, but the castle always tested, with the power itself, the limits of the body that wielded it.
When he left the library, another scent intruded upon the odors of old paper and leather bindings. He had first smelled it in the Catacombs: blood mixed with wine, then veiled in perfume. It belonged neither to a tomb nor a mine nor a beast’s lair, but to the taste of someone who had lingered too long in such places. Alucard followed it toward the upper passages of the Marble Gallery.
As he crossed the central clock room, hidden gears meshed slowly above the ceiling. Railings once beyond reach, blue doors that would not open, and grilles that had refused his body now suggested different paths into one another. The castle’s roads did not lie upon its floors alone. Each new ability did not make the castle smaller; it persuaded the place to unfold another layer it had concealed.
The vertical passage through Olrox’s Quarters held darkness like a well. At the edge of the railing, Alucard folded into a bat and climbed slowly past wall sconces and narrow rooms. Glass jars of dried herbs, cracked urns, and portraits hung beyond the reach of any human hand descended beneath his wings. If he rose too quickly, he saw the ceiling too late. If he slowed too much, his wings grew heavy first. Upon finding a landing midway up, he returned to human shape and touched down soundlessly, toes first.
Hammer and Blade turned their heads at the same moment from opposite ends of the corridor. One had fixed a mass of iron the size of a human head to the end of a long shaft. The other blocked the way with a blade taller than a man balanced across its shoulder. The two giants did not wait for each other to strike; they moved together. The hammer meant to shatter the floor and unsteady his feet, while the long blade erased the space into which he might retreat.
Watching the iron weight fall, Alucard drove forward. Before the impact could climb through the floor into his ankles, he forced his shoulder into the gap between haft and armpit and cut briefly through a joint in the armor. When the huge body dropped to one knee, a thrust from the opposite side sought his back. He planted his first leap on the hammer wielder’s shoulder, pushed himself higher from empty air, and cleared the extended blade. By the time he landed behind its master, the unrecovered weapon had torn through a portrait on the wall. His answering stroke severed the thin metal seam at the nape.
As the suits of armor fell one after another, the scent in the corridor thickened. It was not a perfume chosen to hide blood, but one selected by a man who made blood part of the room’s decoration. Alucard wiped the black fluid from his weapon on the inner cloth of his cloak and went on into a broader chamber.
A marble fountain stood at the center like the ornament of an open courtyard. A winged angel tilted its pitcher, and the water, clear at first, darkened from the bottom when Alucard approached. Red spread slowly through it, then swallowed the whole surface with something like an inhalation. The stream falling from the angel’s fingers remained gentle, yet each drop met the basin with the heavy sound of wet cloth laid upon stone.
He did not touch the water. From the rim of the fountain, he tested only its scent. It held neither the iron smell nor the warmth of living blood. This was a liquid long dead, remembering only the color of blood. The castle had set sanctity and desecration within the same image, then waited to see which a passing traveler would notice first.
At the head of the stairs, a door gleamed quietly between polished gilt and a skin of dust. The corridor beyond was more intact than the rest of the castle. The corners of the frames were unbroken, and marks remained where fingers had recently passed along the window ledges. This was not an abandoned wing. Its master was still awaiting a guest.
Beyond the yellow door stood a long dining table, rows of candlesticks, and empty chairs. Saints set into stained glass remained cold even beneath moonlight colored by the panes. At the far end of the table sat a pale man. He did not rise at the sight of the intruder. Slender fingers encircled the stem of his glass, and he gave Alucard all the time required to approach.
The empty chair opposite him had been placed with excessive precision. Alucard declined the invitation and walked along the side of the table. The master of the room watched his hand settle upon the hilt, then put down his glass. A sound that had followed faintly from far below was at last completed directly before him.
The instant the blade left its sheath, the seated figure vanished.
The candles bent in one direction, and the scent of perfume moved behind him. Alucard began to turn, but the air beneath his feet turned cold first. A shadow pressed flat against the floor rose with a scream and grazed the side of his breastplate. Numb frost came first, then burning pain. He vaulted onto the table to evade the second pillar.
Olrox floated at the opposite side of the room. Blue skulls born from the ends of his sleeves approached in a broad circle, while violet bats poured through their midst along nearly straight paths. The skulls were not fast, but every evasion tightened their ring, and the bats sealed the openings within it. Alucard ran the length of the table and struck the first skull with the dark, heavy blade.
The light did not split. It clung to the steel, dragging his wrist inward with dull resistance, and in that brief delay violet wings tore at his cloak. The master of this room did not fear darkness. To press him with power of the same nature was precisely the answer he had anticipated.
Alucard put away the heavier sword and drew the short weapon fitted to his hand. Its length and weight mattered more than its name; it was a blade that never lied about the rhythm of his wrist. Olrox opened one hand, and a purple flash blew the candlesticks from the table. The white cloth caught fire. A blue skull passed through it and lost its color amid the flames.
At close range the vampire vanished. At a distance, his summoned creatures multiplied. In the middle of the room, pillars of shadow tore open the floor, while bats blocked any retreat toward the walls. Nothing in the assault was hurried, yet it allowed no pause. Olrox had divided the time required to exhaust his intruder among every corner of the chamber, as though savoring a long meal.
Alucard pierced the empty socket of a skull and burst it, then used his second leap to clear a candlestick. A violet pulse struck him precisely in midair. His breastplate rang like a bell, and he crashed onto the table. Plates shattered with sounds as vivid as the memory of a living feast. He rolled just before a pillar of darkness erupted behind him and split the table lengthwise.
Among broken wood and fallen fire, he lowered his gaze. Whenever Olrox disappeared, the candles leaned first; the perfume flowed toward his next position half a beat before he appeared. The air to the right drew taut. Alucard ran before any shape formed. The tip of his short blade opened the back of a pale hand, and for the first time the long-maintained courtesy peeled away from the vampire’s face.
Olrox spread both arms. Pillars of shadow rose in ranks from across the floor. They resembled a solid wall, but between them remained spaces just wide enough for a man to turn sideways and pass. Alucard surrendered a strip of his cloak and entered one such gap. The pursuing skulls burst against the darkness, and their blue fragments briefly outlined the pillars around him.
A violet flash came straight toward him. Rather than receive its force upon the flat of the blade, he angled the point and let the center of the blast slide aside. The impact numbed his fingers and shoulder, but the light missed him. In that half beat he erased the distance and cut arm, chest, and the hollow beneath the throat in one measured breath. What ran from the wounds was not bright blood but a dark red liquid like ancient wine.
The vampire settled at the far end of the room. Every candle sank low at once; skulls and bats dissolved in the air. Alucard did not lower his weapon. Beneath his clothes, Olrox’s shoulders swelled out of all proportion, and the pale face split as it failed to contain the larger shape within.
Green scales thrust through flesh. Arms and jaws lengthened. The chair at the head of the table toppled, and the saints in the stained glass shattered behind the monster’s back. The body discarded along with the immaculate nobleman resembled a colossal lizard, but the same arrogant intelligence remained deep within its eyes.
Its first fist struck the floor, lifting stone slabs and shaking Alucard’s ankles. Before the impact had faded, he entered along its flank and cut through the scales, but the wound was shallow. A white line swept from the creature’s mouth across the floor. The instant he tried to avoid the light itself, the marked place exploded a beat later. Hot air lifted him bodily, and the armor across his back and thighs burned against his flesh.
He rolled twice to extinguish the fire at the end of his cloak, then folded into a small bat beneath the descending claws. His wings rose above the shock wave and bucked violently in the heat. The monster’s second arm raked the entire airspace of the room. An instant before the talons could catch his wingtip, he recovered human weight and landed behind the ruins of the table.
This time fireballs came from its mouth. At first they bounced heavily across the floor, but when the wounded beast lowered its body, their speed and spacing changed. Little suns swept the chamber in succession, and shattered furniture burned like kindling. Alucard used two leaps to clear the flames and aimed for the head, only for a returning arm to strike his left shoulder and drive him into the wall.
His breath gone, he braced a hand against the stone. That hand wanted to seek the heavier weapon. He stopped before touching its hilt. If he spent a long beat to open one deep wound, the room would close his escape first. If the short blade could not carve through the broad torso, then he did not need to strike the torso.
The white line from its mouth marked the floor before the explosion. Before it cast fireballs, the throat contracted deeply; before the fist, the shoulder turned ahead of the foot. Most important, after every attack the head dipped, briefly exposing eye, throat, and the inside of the mouth. Alucard walked toward the center of the chamber to purchase that moment.
Olrox opened its jaws, and white light scraped the floor. Alucard did not follow the beam. He watched where its far end touched. The first explosion passed behind him; he crossed the hot interval between the second and third. As the monster’s jaw descended, he used his first leap to reach the height of its chest, then stepped once more upon the air.
Fire brightened inside its throat. Alucard folded into small wings in midair, letting the first row pass beneath him, and immediately recovered human form as he cut across the right eye. The roar drove blood and heat outward. Digging his fingers between the scales, he held himself against the creature and thrust beneath its throat, then released his body into mist an instant before the claws closed over his back.
The monster’s arm tore through empty vapor. When Alucard gathered again upon the floor, Olrox’s mouth had descended almost within reach. White light formed deep in its throat, but he did not retreat. He stepped closer, gripped the hilt in both hands, and drove the blade into the mouth. Light that could not erupt leaked through the wound. He twisted the steel free, drawing a long cut from beneath the tongue down into the throat.
Olrox staggered backward across the broken table. The light it gathered again escaped through one side of its torn mouth and detonated uselessly against the floor. With the heat at his back, Alucard widened the wound beneath the jaw in rapid succession. As both arms moved to cage him, he escaped upward with the second leap and banked once more in his smaller shape.
Above the monster’s head he recovered human weight and set all the force of his fall behind the point. The blade pierced scales and skull before lodging in bone. His knees struck the creature’s head. The impact shook him hard enough to wrench his wrists, but he refused to release the hilt and drove it to the end.
Only after the sensation of splitting bone reached his palms did the scream break free. It was neither the nobleman’s voice nor a beast’s roar, but the sound of humiliation hoarded for centuries escaping all at once. The giant body managed two more steps before collapsing from the knees.
Alucard sprang clear. Green flesh cracked and fell away like a husk. A gigantic skeleton emerged beneath it and advanced two more steps, refusing to acknowledge death. Its jawbone opened and closed without a mouth, but a cold light descended from above and pulled finger bones, ribs, and vertebrae upward one by one. The skull remained last. It imitated courtesy to the end with its vacant sockets, then shattered into white dust.
Only scorched stone, broken glass, and the dining table split in half remained. Most of the candles had gone out, yet the glass at the head of the table was unbroken. It held nothing, though the darkness within its emptiness seemed deeper than any shadow in the room. Alucard did not reach for it. He cleaned his blade and returned it to its sheath.
Wind descended from a high passage that had been beyond his reach before the battle. Regaining his wings, he passed above the wrecked furniture and climbed into a small chamber. The relic floating at its center took the shape of an ear, then changed into ripples on water. As it entered his palm, wall and floor appeared not to his eyes, but as distances made of sound.
The vibration of the Echo of Bat drew a circle deep within his ears. Even the smallest breath touched the thickness of stone, the height of the ceiling, and the hollow space beneath the floor before returning. In places that stole his sight, blades and openings would no longer be able to keep perfect silence.
When he returned to the larger room, the red fountain continued to flow, indifferent to its master’s death. Alucard passed beneath the angel and ascended the vertical passage. Flight came more naturally now, but for every door and crack revealed by his new reach, the castle’s heights grew deeper still.
He landed with human feet upon a distant ledge. Somewhere far away, iron bit iron in a steady rhythm. Among gears that seemed to chew time itself into fragments came the sound of countless ravens folding their wings at once.
With the pulse of wings still lingering between his shoulder blades and unseen ripples circling inside his ears, Alucard walked toward it. Behind him, the unbroken glass remained at the end of a masterless table. Ahead, a single black feather drifted slowly out of the dark.
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