Last of the Belmonts (A Castlevania: Season 1 and 2 Fanfiction)

Chapter 1: Wrath of the Vampire

Targovishte, Wallachia. 1475. 

The body of the woman burned on the stake, her dying gasps unheard among the priests as they held up their crosses. The bishop stood. Watching. Glaring. One of the prominent men in the city walked up to him. 

'So there were devil engines in her house, Bishop?' the man asked. 

'I saw them with my own eyes. And glass in shapes you've never seen, thin as paper,' the bishop replied. Lightning. Strange weeds and tools. Witch's things. Of all the witches I've rooted out, none had such a collection.' 

'And it had to come to this?' 

'She called it all science, Mayor. Lisa Tepes of Lupu was so far gone that she just couldn't see that it was all given to her by Satan.'

'I've made some small study of the chemical sciences myself, you know,' the mayor replied. The bishop glared sideways at him suspiciously. 'J-Just a small study, you know. I-I'd never think to practice such things.' 

'The archbishop would prefer that life in Wallachia be kept simple, Mayor.' Lisa screamed from where she was bound on the stake. 'Simple. Pure. Good.' She cried out again, tears streaming down her cheeks. 

'Don't hurt them!' she screamed, looking to the skies. 'They don't understand!' 

'Who's she talking to?' the mayor asked. 

'I believe she's exhorting Satan not to take revenge on us,' the bishop replied, 'which I suppose is almost commendable, for a witch. Perhaps I'll say a prayer for her. A small one.' She gasped, coughing from the smoke. 

'I know it's not your fault,' she cried out again, 'but if you can hear, they don't know what they're doing. Be better than them. Please!' She screamed one more time as the flames swallowed her. 

In another village. Somewhere in Wallachia. 

The hulking, unmistakeable form of Vlad "Dracula" Tepes entered the village, the silver wedding ring on his left hand shining in the dull light as he made his way to his home. To see his wife. But the wind picked up, ravens cawing. Something was amiss. He pushed his way through a flock of ravens, through some bushes, ending up at the burned ruins of what used to be the home of Lisa Tepes - his wife. It was dangerously eerie. His knapsack fell out of his hand and to the ground. 

'Are you Mr. Tepes?' the squeaky voice of an old woman sounded from behind him. 'She talked about you.' He turned to her, a dangerous look in his eyes. 

'What happened? Where is my wife?'

'Oh,' she said, bowing slightly. 'The bishop took her. Witchcraft, he said. They're burning her at the stake. She was good to me, your wife.' She laid the flowers in her hands down on the ground, where the remains of the house now stood. 'A good doctor. It's not right, what happened.' 

'Where are they holding her?' he asked. 'The cathedral?' She turned to him, a grave look in her eyes. 

'Oh. Oh, no, sir. She'll be dead by now.' His fists clenched. 

'What?'

'I couldn't be there. I don't care what they say. I won't take joy in that woman being killed by the Church. I'm here remembering her instead.' The smoke wafted past him in thick waves, but he ignored it as a tear of blood ran down his face. 

'She said to me, if you would love me as a man, then live as a man. Travel as a man,' Dracula said softly, more tears of blood running down his face.

'She said you were travelling.'

'I was. The way men do. Slowly. No more.' He opened his hands, looking at the silver wedding band, and the long, clawed fingernails. He turned to her, his countenance dark, eyes blood red and angry. 'I do this last kindness in her name, she who loved you humans and cared for your ills. Take your family and leave Wallachia tonight,' he snarled, coming into the light, and she gasped and stumbled back in fear. 'Pack and go, and do not look back... for no more do I travel as a man.' She cried out as he exploded into flame, and she was thrown back against a brick wall, seeing him engulfed by flames but unharmed. Then the flames grew, and Vlad Dracula Tepes disappeared, leaving only burned ash on the ground behind. The old woman gasped and ran, leaving nothing behind but the singed remainders of the bunch of wildflowers she'd left behind for the memory of Lisa Tepes, the wife of the vampire Dracula. 

Targovishte. 

Lisa Tepes burned until she was nothing but ash and bone, and while the villagers cheered in support of the burning, the bishop and the mayor spoke briefly of other things. But that was soon cut short by a massive explosion, which rocked the courtyard of the cathedral in Targovishte, and the face of Vlad Dracula Tepes appeared in the flames. 

'What have you done?' he exclaimed. 

'Satan!' the mayor cried out. 

'What have you done to my wife?!' The bishop pulled out his cross, beginning to chant in Latin towards the apparition of fire, but it was in vain. 'I am Vlad Dracula Tepes, and you will tell me why this thing has happened to my wife.'

'Oh, no! Oh, God!' the mayor cried out in fear. 'Dracula! He was supposed to be myth, a story made up by heretics.'

'She's... she's a witch,' the bishop said, still holding up his cross. 

'Lisa Tepes was a woman of science, and the one thing that justified humanity's stench upon this planet,' Dracula snarled from the flames. 

'You are not real. You are a fiction that justified the practice of black magic!' the bishop exclaimed. 

'A fiction!' Fire boomed as Dracula's face morphed into that of a skull. 'You take my wife and deny I even exist!' The fire settled once more. 'I give you one year, Wallachians. You have one year to make your peace and remove any marks you have made upon the land. One year, then I'll wipe human life from the land of Wallachia. You took that which I love, so I will take from you everything you have and everything you have ever been. One year.' His face morphed into a skull again and shattered into a pillar of flame. The force of the wind shattered the windows nearby, and glass rained down, then fire rained down from the skies. 

Dracula cried out in anger. 

'One year. It will take me one year to summon an army from the gates of Hell itself,' he said. The door suddenly opened, and white light filtered in. 

'No,' a voice called out. 

'What do you mean, no?' Dracula snarled. 'That woman was the only reason on earth for me to tolerate human life!'

'Then find the one who did the deed,' the man at the door said. 'If you loose an army of the night on Wallachia, you cannot undo it, and many thousands of people just as innocent as her will suffer and die.'

'There are no innocents! Not anymore!' Dracula roared. 'Any one of them could have stood up and said, "No, we won't behave like animals anymore".' 

'I won't let you do it,' the man said. 'I grieve with you, but I won't let you commit genocide.' Dracula cried out in anger once more, and rushed the man before he could draw his sword, slashing him with his claws.