[Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Novel Episode 10] The Abandoned Mine Guarded by Three Throats
The growl did not seem to rise from below the stairs. It sounded as if the stairs themselves were making it.
Alucard stopped on the fourth step. The stone beneath his foot trembled by the smallest measure. Most of the dust from the arena above had fallen from the edge of his cloak, but the smell of iron and blood still remained inside the fabric. The scent rising from below was different. Earth, ash, rotting wood. And the smell of beast-fur scorched by fire long ago. He checked the groove of his sword hilt once more with his fingers.
The sound came again from below.
It was not a single voice. A low, thick rumble came first, followed by a sharper sound. Last came a rough vibration almost like breath, scraping through the cracks between stones. It sounded as if three different dreams were being dreamed inside one body. Alucard drew in a short breath. In this castle, sound arrived before the shape of the enemy.
He descended.
The stairs soon changed into natural stone. The carefully fitted walls of the castle disappeared, replaced by a tunnel that seemed split open by the earth itself. Pickaxe marks remained on the walls, but thin black moss had spread over them. It was the trace of a path carved by human hands and then swallowed back by the castle as if it were its own flesh. The ceiling dropped low, then suddenly rose high. The floor seemed even, then sank deeply a step later. The abandoned mine was not a place merely deserted. It was a place that had continued to change after abandonment.
Alucard pressed each stone first with the tip of his boot. Was it solid, wet, hollow within? The habit learned in the underground waterways still remained in his body. But water was not the danger here. Dry stone collapsed quietly, and old timber rotted from within before a hand ever touched it. The threat did not burn the ankles. It removed the ground.
Something laughed in the dark.
A small shadow dropped from the ceiling. It was not a bat. A small horned monster, a Gremlin, had been hanging upside down before leaping toward Alucard’s head. Its wings were short, its hands far too long. It cackled and aimed its claws at his face.
Alucard tilted his head aside. The claws passed the tips of his hair. He did not swing his sword wide. Beneath a low ceiling, broad movements are stolen by the walls. He only folded his wrist upward. The blade passed through the small creature’s body, and the laughter snapped off at once. The Gremlin fell to the floor in two pieces, and the black smoke rising from its body briefly formed the shape of a human face before vanishing.
Alucard did not linger there. Small enemies often live in the forecourt of larger ones. The castle does not reveal danger all at once. First claws, then scent, and only after that does it open its throat.
The path did not lead only downward. Here and there, narrow rooms opened to the right, and in some of them old wooden crates lay broken. Whether they had once belonged to miners or had later been imitated by the castle was impossible to tell. A rusted cart was lodged against the wall. Its wheels were broken, but inside it was not earth. It was full of bones. Some belonged to small animals. Others looked like the wrist bones of humans.
He stopped as he passed the cart.
Black burn marks lay across the bones. Not traces of flame falling from above, but of fire blasted straight from the front. Some bones were blackened only on one side, while the other side remained white. The direction of the flame was clear. Alucard followed that direction with his gaze. At the end of the path, beyond a low threshold, lay a dark chamber.
The growl sounded again.
This time, it was close.
He drew his sword. The metallic sound spread briefly through the cavern. In the arena above, the sound of the sword had rung like something made for a stage; here, it died low, as though buried in the earth. Alucard lowered the point slightly. In this place, a blade waiting low would be faster than one held high.
The wall ahead suddenly opened, and green light flashed.
A plant. But its leaves were not soft. A Corpseweed stem shot up from the ground, trying to coil around his ankle. The edges of its leaves were serrated like teeth, and from the central bud came the smell of rotting meat. Alucard stepped back and cut the stem. Yellow fluid spattered from the severed place. When it touched stone, a thin smoke rose.
He cut once more and split the bud. Small bones spilled from within. The last fragments of whatever the plant had eaten. Alucard passed without stepping on them. It is not difficult to tread over the dead. But in this castle, things stepped on often reach out a hand.
At the entrance of the chamber lay an enormous bone.
At first, it looked like an ornament above a door. But as he drew closer, he realized it was a jaw. It was too large to tell what beast’s skull it had belonged to. The upper jaw was embedded in the ceiling, and the lower jaw was half-buried in the floor. Alucard had to pass through that open mouth. Anyone who passed this way must have looked as though they were being swallowed by something.
He did not stop.
As he passed between the teeth, the edge of his cloak brushed one fang. A dry sound followed. He tugged the cloth lightly with his hand. At that moment, hot wind pushed from within. Though no fire could be seen, the back of his throat went dry. The air itself was burning first.
The chamber was wide.
Unlike the other rooms of the abandoned mine, this place looked deliberately emptied. The ceiling was high, and broken pillars and timber supports stood irregularly to either side. Old minecart rails were half-buried in the floor. They passed through the center of the room and led toward the right wall, where they disappeared beneath collapsed stone. Cracks opened everywhere, and between them a faint red heat glimmered. It was as if fire deep below the earth were breathing up to this place.
There was nothing in the center.
That was what made it strange.
Alucard stopped at the edge of the room. Too much empty space is an invitation. Especially in a place where both ceiling and floor are unstable. He inspected the left pillar, then the collapsed rails to the right. Places to fall, places to be trapped, places to leap across. Before a battle begins, the battlefield already says half of what must be known.
Then the darkness breathed.
What he had thought was the black rear wall of the chamber moved. First, two red eyes opened. Then another two, and another two. Six eyes opened at different heights. One low throat growled close to the floor, while the central neck lifted its head. The right head was already baring its teeth.
Cerberus stepped out of the dark.
The three heads were attached to the same body, yet each faced a different direction. The middle head was the largest, with blackened drool running from beneath its jaw. The left head moved low, sniffing the ground, while the right head constantly clacked its teeth. The four legs were thick as boulders, and whenever the claws passed over the rails, they made a metallic shriek. No tail could be seen. It was either hidden in the dark, or the shadow itself followed like one.
Alucard raised his sword.
The middle head of Cerberus closed its eyes.
The gesture was so quiet that, at first, he did not recognize it as the warning before an attack. The next instant, the throat beneath those closed eyes swelled red. Alucard leaped aside. A ball of fire grazed his shoulder and struck the wall behind him. It was not an explosion, but compressed flame. When it touched stone, the fire briefly spread like a round flower, then left a black circle on the surface.
The heat came late.
He raised his shield as he landed. The right head lunged to bite. Teeth after fire. A simple connection, but fast. Alucard shoved the shield beneath the jaw. Teeth bit metal. The sound of the shield buckling rang up to his elbow. He tried to cut the neck with his sword, but the left head rushed in low, aiming at his ankle.
Alucard jumped back.
Too late. The teeth of the left head tore through the edge of his boot. His foot lifted slightly from the ground, then landed slantwise on the rail. The metal was slick. His balance broke. In that opening, the whole body of Cerberus pushed forward. Not three heads now, but one mass of weight.
He thought of Form of Mist.
He loosened the outline of his body. Very briefly. As Cerberus’s shoulder bore down on him, Alucard’s body blurred like vapor. The beast’s body passed through. No — more precisely, Alucard lost form just enough to avoid the collision. The scent of hot fur and blood moved through his entire body. In the next breath, he returned to flesh and bone.
His knee buckled.
There was a moment when strength left him. That brief gap was the problem. The right head of Cerberus turned back and spat fire. Alucard could not evade completely. Flame caught the edge of his cloak. The black fabric spread red as it burned. He seized the cloak with his left hand and pressed it against a stone pillar. The fire went out, but the smell of burning was added to the air.
His first judgment had been wrong.
Mist was a power for passing through doors, not for erasing battle. It could not be sustained long, and the instant his body returned, it lagged. Before an enemy like Cerberus, whose directions were three, that delay became teeth. Alucard decided not to use that power as a refuge again. Only when making a path. Only for the length of one breath.
Cerberus slowly turned its body.
The three heads did not all look at him at once. The central head held the front, the right head watched above, and the left head read the ground. They divided the possible directions of escape among themselves. This beast was not simply a monster with three heads. It was a prison dragged forward by three gazes.
The left head barked low first.
The floor trembled. Cerberus charged. Alucard started to evade right, then stopped. The right head was already preparing fire in that direction. Its eyes closed. Its throat reddened. Alucard did not jump. The fireball would fly high. He lowered himself and slid forward. Flame passed over his head, and hot wind lifted his hair.
He entered beneath the central body.
It was a dangerous place. If the beast’s foot came down, bones would shatter. But it was also a place where none of the three heads could see him easily. He cut the inside of the foreleg. The blade opened thick muscle. Cerberus twisted its body. The right forepaw came down. Alucard stepped onto the rail and sprang aside. The claw struck where he had been and split the floor.
The middle head roared.
The sound shook the room before fire could. Black dust fell from the ceiling, and one old support beam creaked. Cerberus lifted its injured foreleg briefly, then set it down again. The wound was not deep. But each time weight settled on that leg, its movement lagged by the smallest measure.
Alucard saw it.
The place that slows is the opening. But to enter that opening, he had to pass through the order of three heads.
The pattern repeated. The closed eyes and flame of the middle head. The quick bite of the right. The low pounce of the left. Then the charge of the entire body. Each could be evaded alone. Together, they erased space. Alucard did not circle the room. If he moved in a circle, Cerberus would take the center, and the three heads would cover every direction. Instead, he made short straight lines between the broken pillars. One pillar to the next. From inside the rail to the outside of a crack. He avoided the floor where heat rose, and did not treat the wall marked by many burns as shelter. Fire already knew that place.
Cerberus gathered fire again.
This time, the left head closed its eyes.
Only then did Alucard understand. Fire did not belong to the middle head alone. Each head had its turn. Closed eyes were the warning; the swelling throat marked the direction. He moved before the flame was released. But the right head had been waiting for that movement. Teeth came from the side.
He raised his shield. Impact. Metal bent, and his arm was driven back. At the same time, flame skimmed across the floor. Not a fireball, but a low line of fire. Alucard leaped. The first jump carried him over the flame, and the second carried him past the right head. In the air, he brought his sword down. The blade cut behind the right ear.
Black blood sprayed.
The right head screamed. The other two heads reacted immediately. The middle head breathed fire upward, while the left head bit at the place where he would land. Alucard became mist in midair. Very briefly. Flame pierced the place where he had been, and just before the teeth closed, he regained form. The moment his feet touched the floor, his body grew heavy.
He bent his knees and received that weight.
This time, he was not late. Mist used with foreknowledge was not escape, but interval. As he landed, he rolled aside and cut beneath the jaw of the left head. With a sound of bone striking teeth, the neck bent backward. The entire body of Cerberus twisted.
Then the beast changed its method.
All three heads lowered at once. It was not the motion of gathering fire. A charge. But not a simple straight charge. The forepaws clawed deeply at the floor, and the hind legs crouched as if treading on the heat of the cavern. The whole body seemed to shrink for an instant. Then Cerberus sprang.
Alucard fled behind a pillar.
The pillar did not hold. When Cerberus’s shoulder struck, timber and stone shattered together. Splinters flew everywhere. A shard of wood lodged in Alucard’s arm. He stepped back and did not pull it out. Remove it now, and more blood would flow. Later. After survival.
Cerberus did not stop its charge. Just before striking the wall, the three heads bit in different directions and turned the body. Its center of gravity shifted as if sliding, and the enormous body changed direction faster than expected. The wide chamber of the mine was not narrow to it. This place had been made as a cage where the beast could turn.
Alucard was forced back.
His heel touched a rail. Slick metal again. This time, he did not avoid it. He slid his body along the rail. Cerberus’s claws followed, scraping the floor. The right head prepared fire. Eyes closing. Throat reddening. At the end of the rail, before a collapsed pile of stone, Alucard leaped. The fire flew straight and struck the rubble.
The fallen stones scattered like an explosion.
Alucard dropped through the fragments. Dust briefly covered his sight. Cerberus could not see him either. The three heads barked in different directions. In that moment, their gazes were no longer one. Alucard moved through the dust. He killed his footsteps and folded his cloak behind him. The right head kept shaking to one side because of the injured ear. The left head, wounded beneath the jaw, raised itself late after biting low. Only the middle head was still precise.
Then the middle was the leash.
Alucard stepped out from the front.
The middle head saw him. Its eyes closed. The warning before attack. The throat swelled red. He did not evade. Cerberus, too, seemed to pause for an instant. When prey does not move, a beast opens its mouth wider. Alucard waited for that one beat. Just before fire emerged, the muscles beneath the neck pulled upward. The jaw fixed, and the throat opened.
He entered then.
The first leap was low. The fireball came not above his head, but at shoulder height. Alucard twisted aside and passed the edge of the flame. Heat brushed his left cheek. He smelled skin burning. But the sword was already moving. With the second leap, he rose beneath the middle head’s jaw and thrust upward.
The blade passed into the throat.
Fire burst. Not outward, but inside. The middle head of Cerberus bent backward, vomiting black smoke and red flame. Heat rushed up to Alucard’s wrist. He did not release the sword. If he let go, the next set of teeth would come. He twisted the hilt and let his body fall downward. The blade tore a long line beneath the throat.
The middle head swayed.
It was not dead. But it could no longer gather fire properly. The red light flickered inside its mouth, then vanished. The remaining two heads attacked like mad things. The right kept biting, and the left swept low across the floor. The coordination between the three heads had broken. But a broken beast is harder to predict.
Alucard dropped his shield.
The bent metal only added weight now. The shield struck the rail as it fell. The sound made the right head react for an instant. Alucard used that reaction. He jumped opposite the direction of the fallen shield. The right head’s teeth bit empty space. The left head followed late. Because of the injured jaw, the angle of its low attack had become shallow.
He stepped on it.
More precisely, his toe pressed the side of its jaw in passing, and he jumped. The Leap Stone drove his body upward again. From above, the back of Cerberus looked like an enormous black rock. Three necks swayed in different directions, and the muscles of its shoulders contracted irregularly. As Alucard descended, he cut once more behind the right head’s injured ear.
This time, it went deep.
The right head sagged. It did not fall off completely, but it could no longer bite with precision. Its mouth opened and closed, chewing air. Cerberus twisted its body. Alucard slid down from its back and drew the sword free. The landing was dangerous. The middle head still lived, and the left aimed at his ankle.
He became mist.
This time, he had chosen exactly where to pass. Between the beast’s foreleg and the crack in the floor. A very narrow gap where flame rose. As flesh and bone, it would be dangerous. As a blurred body, he could pass through. Mist skimmed across the crack. Heat rising from below seemed to cut through him. In the next instant, he stood again at Cerberus’s left flank.
Strength left him.
But the left head had lost him too. For a moment. That was enough. Alucard did not cut the flank. The body was too thick, and time was short. He aimed again for the already injured foreleg. The same place. Where the first wound had opened. The sword sank deep.
Cerberus collapsed.
Not completely. But one foreleg folded, and the massive body lowered. For the first time, the height of the three heads came near Alucard’s eyes. The middle head closed its eyes for the last time. It tried to gather fire. Red light shook uneasily inside the throat. The right head bit weakly at empty air, and the left scraped the ground.
Alucard stood before it.
He must not evade now. If he did, the beast would stand again. He drew the sword back. The mouth of the middle head opened. Flame bloomed in the throat. It had not yet come out. Alucard kicked off the floor with his toes. He stepped onto the rail. This time, the slick metal pushed him forward.
He slid in low.
Fire burst outward. Alucard twisted his body aside. Flame grazed his shoulder, and the torn edge of his cloak burned again. But he did not stop. The sword rose from below. This time, not into the throat, but where the head met the neck. Beneath thick muscle and black fur, the place leading toward the center of the three heads.
The blade entered.
All three heads of Cerberus screamed at once. The low cry of the right, the broken howl of the left, and the burning roar of the center shook the abandoned mine together. A support beam in the ceiling snapped. Dust and stone poured down. Alucard did not draw the sword out. He drove it deeper. Blood from his wrist ran along the hilt. Hot breath covered his face. Closing his eyes would mean the end.
He did not close them.
He turned his body. The sword crossed through the inside. The sensation of something bone-like snapping traveled up his arm. Cerberus’s forepaws scraped the floor. Once. Twice. The third time had no strength. The lights in the three heads went out one by one. Right, left, and finally the middle.
The enormous body fell sideways.
The whole abandoned mine rumbled low. Dust drifted down from the broken supports. The red light between the cracks trembled briefly, then settled. No more fire came from Cerberus’s mouth. Instead, black smoke flowed out little by little and rose toward the ceiling. It could not gather into one place. It split into three streams, then vanished into the same darkness.
Alucard pulled the sword free.
The blade was hot. He did not sheath it immediately, but held it pointed downward. Black blood and half-burned drool fell from its tip. The liquid hissed softly where it touched the floor. Only then did he pull the wooden splinter from his left arm. A little blood flowed. When he pressed it with his fingers, it soon stopped. In this castle, the wounds noticed late often remain longer than deep ones.
The room became quiet.
Once quiet, other sounds could be heard. Stone rolling somewhere far away. The low breath of heat rising from beneath the cracks. And from the rear of the chamber, where Cerberus’s body had blocked the view until now, the sound of a door opening. Not a great door. A light metallic sound, as if a small lock had been released.
Alucard walked toward it.
As he passed beside Cerberus’s body, the left head’s eye remained open. There was no light in it. Yet the empty socket seemed to follow him. Alucard did not look away. The beast had been a gatekeeper. Whether it had guarded by its own will or had been bound by another’s command, he could not know. Like the two beasts of the arena, this hound too may have been called forth.
The thought was brief.
In this castle, pity can dull the point of a blade. But failing to remember is dangerous as well. As he passed, Alucard lowered his sword once. Not a rite, not mourning, only a small mark offered to the battle that had passed.
The room beyond the door was narrow.
There was no pedestal at the center. Instead, a small stone niche had been carved into the wall, and inside it hovered a reddish card. It was not flame. Yet at the edge of the card, something like a tiny tail seemed to sway. The closer Alucard drew, the more he heard a faint laugh near his ear. It resembled the Gremlin’s laugh, but thinner and cleverer.
He reached out.
The card trembled lightly the moment it touched his palm. It was not thin like paper, but like a small living heart. Red light seeped between his fingers. For an instant, a small shadow formed in the darkness. Horns, thin wings, a long tail. The outline of a demon that had not yet fully gained a body flickered once near Alucard’s shoulder, then vanished.
Demon Card.
The name was not heard as a word. He understood it the way a relic’s purpose leaves itself inside the body. If called, it would come. Small, fierce, seemingly obedient, yet never able to hide its own laughter. Some mechanisms in the castle lay beyond the reach of his hand. Some switches could not be reached by sword, jump, or mist. At such times, another hand would be needed.
Alucard took the card.
He did not call it yet. A new power should not be tested at once; first, its weight must be known. He had trusted Form of Mist too easily in battle and had been scorched by fire. Power opens roads, but when trusted wrongly, it makes wounds instead of paths.
On the right side of the room was a narrow passage. Iron bars blocked the way midway. The gaps were too narrow for a human body to pass. Alucard stood before them for a moment. The sensation of mist gained in the arena moved quietly inside him. This time, there was no need to pass through. Beyond the bars was a small dead-end chamber. The castle does not open every path the instant one gains an ability. Some paths only confirm that the ability exists, while the true door appears later.
He turned away.
Beyond the chamber where Cerberus had fallen, a path had opened downward. The air changed again. Until now, the smells of fire, fur, and hot drool had been strong. From below rose the smell of rotting flesh and old earth. Though there was almost no water, it was damp. Not the moisture of the living, but the dampness made by buried things breathing slowly.
The stairs were not short.
The farther he descended, the fewer pickaxe marks remained on the walls. In their place appeared more and more traces like scratches made by fingernails. Some had been carved from the inside outward. Things that had tried to get out. Alucard did not slow his steps. If he stopped, those marks would become clearer. And in this castle, a trace stared at too long soon gains a voice.
A small save room lay to the left. He entered.
Red light wrapped around his body. The skin scorched by Cerberus’s fire, the wound in his arm, the pain in his wrist slowly subsided. But the smell remaining at the tip of his nose did not disappear. The heat from three throats. The body that, even in death, had guarded the door until the end like something commanded. Within the light, Alucard looked down at his sword. The blade had become clean, but his hand still remembered the shape of battle.
He came out again.
Before the door leading downward, he heard a very small laugh. This time it was not a Gremlin. The sound rang from somewhere inside him. The Demon Card had responded. Alucard looked over his shoulder, but there was nothing there. Even so, he knew. There would now be moments when he was not alone. Whether that would be comfort or another noise, he did not yet know.
He pushed the door.
Cold air rose. Though he had passed through a chamber of fire, the space beyond was cold as a winter tomb. From far away came the sound of something collapsing, followed by the noise of many things writhing at once. Not one body. Dozens, perhaps hundreds. A stench rolled over the low wall ahead. Older than blood, heavier than bone.
Alucard gripped the sword hilt.
Behind him, the abandoned mine fell silent. The three heads of Cerberus no longer growled. But ahead, another kind of multitude was breathing. Once the gatekeeper beast had ended, it seemed a crowd of corpses waited next.
He descended.
In the darkness, something wet slowly slid along the wall.
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