So many elements in play, so many people, so much chaos, and no one thought to consider ambient and intrinsic magics found in the fortress in the calculations.
Or rather Death (who hardly cares) and Saint-Germain (who was crazed with a need to reunite with his own love) certainly hadn’t. Sypha almost certainly would have if she’d had the time and the books and the rest.
When it all explodes…
There’s a hole in the great fortress, space where reality undid itself. That is the price of meddling with the Infinite Corridor. That Death was caught up in it is a miracle.
That the others were…
That she survives is almost to be expected, though her efforts to protect the others… there is a part of her that will never forgive herself even with the impossibility of the moment.
That he survives seems the cruelest of circumstances, especially when Sypha can see that he is so much more sane, so much more functional than the half-rabid beast they’d fought before.
And in the hollowed out wreckage of the castle wing… they are all that is.
The shields she flung up to protect them - ice, wind, long winding arms of lightning - almost killed her. The void took them, took her magic, yanked it streaming into that undoing. And it's left her as hollowed of power as of feeling as she wavers on the edge of the nothingness.
She can't summon either as she stares at Vlad Tepes, scarce steps away. Her hands are numb and her shoulders heave as she stands, unable to even be wary of him now.
The tableau could have continued until one of them collapsed, but her head jerks when there's a noise, a groan, something giving 'way, and she lunges forward. He may be twice her size, or even more, but she grabs for his arm all the same, wrenching up a feeble blast of wind from deeper than she knew she could reach to shove them both away from the gap.
He never expected to feel the wind again. He never expected to step upon the mortal plane. He thought he was doomed to hell for the rest of eternity but at least-
At least he'd be with her.
At least they'd be together.
But he felt it. He felt her soul be destroyed. Felt his son cease to exist the same way. The Belmont, Death-
So many different lights, different souls, all of them snuffed out. He knows why he survived, and it takes him a moment of listening to understand why she had.
Ah.
Shit.
When she grabs him, he grabs her in return. And when she uses the wind to propel them, he flies them further, easing the movement with his own power until they can both come to rest on stable floor.
He does one better and lands near a lounge chair where she can sit. Her defense has surely taken more from her than him. But he will let her go once they’re there.
She staggers, not releasing his arm, and sinks down into the chair with a ragged breath, unable even to be surprised it's there to catch her. Fine tremors run through her, but she's too exhausted even to really shake, too stunned to let go.
He nods… and wishes that he were lying. But there was no mistaking the feel of what happened, the remnants left behind like a spectral blood spray on the walls.
Her free hand goes to her heart, her stomach, and she curls it into a fist there, pressing in hard as she curls forward, eyes round and dry. They waver, threatening to roll back, but Sypha doesn't let that tempting darkness close over her, forces it back, gulps deep breaths of air. It's sharp with spent magic, ozone, and the biting taste of vaporized stone.
The suddenness of it all is like a blade, and if she shifts her grip, even a little, it will cut her open.
Forcing an unsteady exhale, she turns her head, looks up at him. Vlad Tepes Dracula. Whose body she burned beyond ash, months ago.
"And Death- is gone." A victory, then, if the hollowest of ones. The kind Trevor had told her was his kind of victory.
"That vile creature is destroyed, yes" and he spits the words, because he knows the source of these mechanations, has seen the damnable spirit cause more chaos and calamity than he could hope to. Their association was not a fond one from his perspective. Death, as he called himself, as it called himself, was a parasite.
That it had taken this, the second loss in as many years. That it had robbed the world of two lines, two sons-
Some might be surprised that he would be unhappy at the loss of the Belmonts. But he has many enemies. And at least those made the battle worth fighting.
Then again, he knows what he can smell. Not that he will say anything to that fact. Not now.
Sypha isn't the sort to look away from pain, but she can't stare at the gap, the destroyed hollow where they were and they aren't. She lets go of his arm at last, and stifles a sound of effort as she pushes herself to her feet. "I can walk," she says stiffly. She's a Speaker. She's walked thousands of miles, she can walk now.
She needs to think of what to do now, where to go, but right now, she just needs to get away from that ruin.
When things are settled, and the bizarre calm after catastrophe has sunk in, Sypha retreats from it all. Her grief takes up room and she makes space for it, letting Greta handle her villagers. And Dracula, she's sure, can handle himself.
She's tired, so tired her bones ache through her pelvis, her lower back. But instead of sleep, she sits awake through the nights, sitting in the arched window of the room she's claimed for herself, looking down into the chasm of the Belmont vault.
Trevor gave it to Adrian, and now they're both gone.
She knows, staring into that pit from so far above, that she can't stay here. Her stomach twists with the thought, the back of her neck prickling with cold sweat.
Not even a week after the implosion, Sypha leaves through a side door, a rucksack with a spare blanket and enough food for a week over her shoulder. A week will see her to the village past Danesti. If it still stands, she can sort herself out there. If it doesn't... She'll still sort herself out there.
Sypha doesn't make it more than a mile. She doesn't remember falling, but suddenly she finds herself lying in the road, staring at the dust before her. When she starts to rise, the world swims again and she sits back down hard, the back of her wrist pressed to her mouth.
The next time she tries, her stomach cramps with a violence she's never felt before, and she curls tightly in on herself in the road with a cry.
He'd never tell her to go but he's just as unable to tell her to stay, even if he thinks a woman in her condition should not be on the roads, even the roads newly cleared by the death of Death and the swath they'd worked through on their way here.
But he can't help but feel a certain sense of... responsibility. Even if he is certain she would be loathe to hear of such a thing regarding her. It's why he pulls up a mirror, the shards floating around him as he goes through his work, keeping an eye on her for the time being, at least until she reaches a major city with safe walls.
That is why he sees her fall, and again, and he knows she will be cross with him, but he's hardly concerned about that as he places the mirror back in its case and a bold of flame shoots out the window of the great castle.
Sypha will see a bright light, a flash, a burst of flame hitting the ground like a lightning bolt... and then she will see a familiar form walking towards her.
Tired. And concerned.
"For the child, at least, please: come back to the castle with me. At least until you are well again."
Pulling herself up enough to sit, arms propped on her knees, she looks up at him. She's gone pale, red lashes and brows unnaturally vivid in her face. The skin around her mouth is tight with controlled pain, but the biggest indicator of how bad it is is that she reaches up for a hand to get back to her feet.
"I don't have very long. I want to find my people again before I get too far along."
"You say that as if I dread such a thing," he says with a small huff, "though I wonder if the welcome your people have to my castle has been lost with time."
There are many worlds along the Infinite Corridor.
In this particular one, Lisa of the village of Lubu goes to the biggest city she can reach instead of the great fortress of Dracula.
Instead, almost 20 years later, there is a Speaker who approaches the door, seeking not medicine to heal the masses but knowledge. Secrets. The kind kept pressed between leather bindings and scrawled on parchment as her people would never approve.
Sypha knows there's no chance he hasn't seen her coming. It isn't as if she intended to sneak up. She camped on the gruesome plain in plain view of the castle last night, and spent the morning making a slow circumnavigation of it, staring up at the utterly impossible wild geometry of the thing. The beauty of its precision and strangeness. The horror of the ancient, barren field of bones around it.
By the time she climbs the stairs, she isn't surprised that the doors begin to open as soon as she knocks, and as soon as they're open far enough, she slips inside, almost running to get a look at the mechanisms moving them.
Only when silence falls again does caution return, and Sypha turns away from the gears and pistons to look down the length of the entry hall, with its attenuated, tendon-like candelabrum and the sharp, geometrical patterns of its floor. The candles shed only barely enough light to see by, and so she adds her own, opening one hand into the shape of intent before her chest. A blue globe, bright as afternoon sky, burned into life above her palm, its light reaching much farther.
The voice comes from the darkness, but here, in this great hall, the 'darkness' is effectively everywhere. It's in every corner, in every crevice. Even the candles seem to only exaggerate it.
"An interesting choice. And... more polite than one might guess of an intruder."
And it is only then that the shadows flutter beside her and materialize into a massive man, nearly eight feet tall with pointed ears and pointed nails and definitely pointed teeth.
“How rare to see one of you at my door. Rare… and curious. Tell me, Sypha Belnades…
They'd been putting this off for, fuck, years. Either there was never time enough, or there was a flood, or a port, or some nightmare situation, or Trevor just really didn't want to think about his family in this context. But he has to do it, before the window closes for good.
Guess it's time to go and reclaim the bones of his family.
He clears his throat, waiting for Dracula at the edge of the portal between the Barge and Wallachia. Trevor's dressed warmly for the winter chill, back in clothing he would have worn instead of the more 'modern', 18th century pirate gear he'd favored since his days in Flotilla.
"So, uh. When you get through, like I said: don't be surprised if one of the towers is lying in pieces all over the place. And mind the huge hole in the ground, I don't know if Adrian's had a chance to patch it over yet."
He's obviously nervous, eyes darting around like he expects something else to happen.
And Dracula, on the other hand, is dressed in his usual outfit. He's also walking through the portal, unbothered and unhurried. Whatever would 'happen' would have more to worry about from him than the other way around, after all. The Barge is one thing, but in this world, there are very few things he has to worry about.
"If he hasn't, I'll see about getting it fixed soon enough," he says fondly as he offers Trevor a faint smirk. "If I forgave you for your part in my death, I can hardly hold my landscaping and architectural damage against you."
Trevor is, sad to say, more worried about being yelled at than killed. He's acting more antsy than usual, unable to fathom the creeping sensation of inviting Dracula onto their land, friend and family member though he may be. Who's to say the ghost of Leon won't rise up to strangle him for it?
He doesn't seriously believe it, but it's something to entertain.
"Well, wait until you see it before you go making promises." He grumbles, and heads on in after.
They arrive fairly close to the time Trevor died; the people of Danesti are thankfully asleep, with the full moon offering enough light to see the half-ruined Castlevania casting a long shadow over the fully-ruined Belmont manor, with the Hold safely tucked away underneath.
Trevor, curious, immediately goes to check the Hold for the new elevator Adrian's put in. And avoid the initial first bouts of surprise when it's clear they broke off a significant portion of one of the towers.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
For Sypha - midcanon
Or rather Death (who hardly cares) and Saint-Germain (who was crazed with a need to reunite with his own love) certainly hadn’t. Sypha almost certainly would have if she’d had the time and the books and the rest.
When it all explodes…
There’s a hole in the great fortress, space where reality undid itself. That is the price of meddling with the Infinite Corridor. That Death was caught up in it is a miracle.
That the others were…
That she survives is almost to be expected, though her efforts to protect the others… there is a part of her that will never forgive herself even with the impossibility of the moment.
That he survives seems the cruelest of circumstances, especially when Sypha can see that he is so much more sane, so much more functional than the half-rabid beast they’d fought before.
And in the hollowed out wreckage of the castle wing… they are all that is.
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She can't summon either as she stares at Vlad Tepes, scarce steps away. Her hands are numb and her shoulders heave as she stands, unable to even be wary of him now.
The tableau could have continued until one of them collapsed, but her head jerks when there's a noise, a groan, something giving 'way, and she lunges forward. He may be twice her size, or even more, but she grabs for his arm all the same, wrenching up a feeble blast of wind from deeper than she knew she could reach to shove them both away from the gap.
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At least he'd be with her.
At least they'd be together.
But he felt it. He felt her soul be destroyed. Felt his son cease to exist the same way. The Belmont, Death-
So many different lights, different souls, all of them snuffed out. He knows why he survived, and it takes him a moment of listening to understand why she had.
Ah.
Shit.
When she grabs him, he grabs her in return. And when she uses the wind to propel them, he flies them further, easing the movement with his own power until they can both come to rest on stable floor.
He does one better and lands near a lounge chair where she can sit. Her defense has surely taken more from her than him. But he will let her go once they’re there.
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"... They're gone."
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“They are.”
He does not let go of her either.
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The suddenness of it all is like a blade, and if she shifts her grip, even a little, it will cut her open.
Forcing an unsteady exhale, she turns her head, looks up at him. Vlad Tepes Dracula. Whose body she burned beyond ash, months ago.
"And Death- is gone." A victory, then, if the hollowest of ones. The kind Trevor had told her was his kind of victory.
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That it had taken this, the second loss in as many years. That it had robbed the world of two lines, two sons-
Some might be surprised that he would be unhappy at the loss of the Belmonts. But he has many enemies. And at least those made the battle worth fighting.
Then again, he knows what he can smell. Not that he will say anything to that fact. Not now.
"I should bring you inside."
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She needs to think of what to do now, where to go, but right now, she just needs to get away from that ruin.
"Is the rest of the castle at risk?"
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cw body horror
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She's tired, so tired her bones ache through her pelvis, her lower back. But instead of sleep, she sits awake through the nights, sitting in the arched window of the room she's claimed for herself, looking down into the chasm of the Belmont vault.
Trevor gave it to Adrian, and now they're both gone.
She knows, staring into that pit from so far above, that she can't stay here. Her stomach twists with the thought, the back of her neck prickling with cold sweat.
Not even a week after the implosion, Sypha leaves through a side door, a rucksack with a spare blanket and enough food for a week over her shoulder. A week will see her to the village past Danesti. If it still stands, she can sort herself out there. If it doesn't... She'll still sort herself out there.
Sypha doesn't make it more than a mile. She doesn't remember falling, but suddenly she finds herself lying in the road, staring at the dust before her. When she starts to rise, the world swims again and she sits back down hard, the back of her wrist pressed to her mouth.
The next time she tries, her stomach cramps with a violence she's never felt before, and she curls tightly in on herself in the road with a cry.
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He'd never tell her to go but he's just as unable to tell her to stay, even if he thinks a woman in her condition should not be on the roads, even the roads newly cleared by the death of Death and the swath they'd worked through on their way here.
But he can't help but feel a certain sense of... responsibility. Even if he is certain she would be loathe to hear of such a thing regarding her. It's why he pulls up a mirror, the shards floating around him as he goes through his work, keeping an eye on her for the time being, at least until she reaches a major city with safe walls.
That is why he sees her fall, and again, and he knows she will be cross with him, but he's hardly concerned about that as he places the mirror back in its case and a bold of flame shoots out the window of the great castle.
Sypha will see a bright light, a flash, a burst of flame hitting the ground like a lightning bolt... and then she will see a familiar form walking towards her.
Tired. And concerned.
"For the child, at least, please: come back to the castle with me. At least until you are well again."
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"I don't have very long. I want to find my people again before I get too far along."
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He tilts his head to one side and makes sure he has her eyes.
“But I am here. And my arts are greater than theirs in the ways of child birth and pre-birth care.”
It would sound arrogant if he wasn’t so sure it was true.
“If you wish them around you, we can send a messenger to find them. They can be brought to you and made welcome.”
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For Sypha - Precanon AU
In this particular one, Lisa of the village of Lubu goes to the biggest city she can reach instead of the great fortress of Dracula.
Instead, almost 20 years later, there is a Speaker who approaches the door, seeking not medicine to heal the masses but knowledge. Secrets. The kind kept pressed between leather bindings and scrawled on parchment as her people would never approve.
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By the time she climbs the stairs, she isn't surprised that the doors begin to open as soon as she knocks, and as soon as they're open far enough, she slips inside, almost running to get a look at the mechanisms moving them.
Only when silence falls again does caution return, and Sypha turns away from the gears and pistons to look down the length of the entry hall, with its attenuated, tendon-like candelabrum and the sharp, geometrical patterns of its floor. The candles shed only barely enough light to see by, and so she adds her own, opening one hand into the shape of intent before her chest. A blue globe, bright as afternoon sky, burned into life above her palm, its light reaching much farther.
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"An interesting choice. And... more polite than one might guess of an intruder."
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"I knocked and your door opened. Is that intruding?"
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He might just be behind her now as he continues.
"Nor an introduction."
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Her voice isn't quite steady as she turns - Sypha lacks nothing for courage but she is very aware of the risk she's taking.
"My name is Sypha Belnades, and I am a Speaker. I have come to learn from you."
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And it is only then that the shadows flutter beside her and materialize into a massive man, nearly eight feet tall with pointed ears and pointed nails and definitely pointed teeth.
“How rare to see one of you at my door. Rare… and curious. Tell me, Sypha Belnades…
“What do you think you can learn from me?”
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Guess it's time to go and reclaim the bones of his family.
He clears his throat, waiting for Dracula at the edge of the portal between the Barge and Wallachia. Trevor's dressed warmly for the winter chill, back in clothing he would have worn instead of the more 'modern', 18th century pirate gear he'd favored since his days in Flotilla.
"So, uh. When you get through, like I said: don't be surprised if one of the towers is lying in pieces all over the place. And mind the huge hole in the ground, I don't know if Adrian's had a chance to patch it over yet."
He's obviously nervous, eyes darting around like he expects something else to happen.
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"If he hasn't, I'll see about getting it fixed soon enough," he says fondly as he offers Trevor a faint smirk. "If I forgave you for your part in my death, I can hardly hold my landscaping and architectural damage against you."
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He doesn't seriously believe it, but it's something to entertain.
"Well, wait until you see it before you go making promises." He grumbles, and heads on in after.
They arrive fairly close to the time Trevor died; the people of Danesti are thankfully asleep, with the full moon offering enough light to see the half-ruined Castlevania casting a long shadow over the fully-ruined Belmont manor, with the Hold safely tucked away underneath.
Trevor, curious, immediately goes to check the Hold for the new elevator Adrian's put in. And avoid the initial first bouts of surprise when it's clear they broke off a significant portion of one of the towers.