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

Chapter 8: We're Never Doing That Again

Later that evening... 

We all sat around a small fire to keep warm after hours of travel. 

'I'm still not completely clear on why you don't catch fire in the daylight.'

'I am half-human,' Alucard replied to Sypha. 'My mother's name was Lisa, and she was a mortal.' I saw the sadness shadow over Alucard's face, and my own heart dropped, knowing the pain of losing family. 

'I would very much like to hear the story of how that happened,' Sypha said cheerfully. Alucard chuckled. 

'She actually showed up at his front door. She found the castle and banged on the front door with the pommel of her knife.'

'She sounds interesting,' I said with a smile. 

'Oh, she was remarkable,' Alucard replied wistfully, his gaze casting over to me from across the fire. 'She beat on the door until my father let her in and demanded he teach her how to be a doctor.' Trevor sat up suddenly from where he was laying on his side by the fire. 

'Wait, Dracula taught a human how be a doctor?' he asked incredulously, his tone turning to mockery. 'What was first, bloodletting?'

'Trevor!' I hissed. 'Be nice.' 

'God, you still think you're funny,' Alucard deadpanned. 'My father -'

'Dracula,' Trevor interrupted.

'... is a man of science, a philosopher, a scholar, and knows things our society had forgotten three times over. Do you still not understand the enormity of what we're doing?' Alucard asked, glaring solidly at Trevor. 'He's gone mad and from that, there is no recovering him.' His gaze turned stony as he stared into the fire. 

'Shame,' Trevor said, but it came out as mocking. 

'It's a tragedy. He's a repository of centuries of learning. He could have changed the world. He might have if Mother hadn't died. She'd sent him out into the world. That's why he wasn't there when the bishops took her.'

'She sent him away?' Sypha asked. 

'She sent him to travel. To learn the state of the world, true nature of humans, how they live,' Alucard replied. 

'She was turning him,' I said with awe in my voice. 

'Imagine if he could have aimed all that knowledge at improving lives. If the religious inquisition hadn't proved true all his worst instincts about humans,' Alucard said as he growled out the remainder of the sentence with pain in his voice. 

'And now he's going to use her death as an excuse to destroy the world,' Trevor remarked. 

'Oh, the world will still be here, Belmont,' Alucard replied. 'Trees will still grow, birds will still sing, animals will still hump away in the undergrowth. But you won't be here. And you won't be here. None of you. The sun will still set, but you will not see it rise. There will only be Dracula - and his war council and the hordes of the night. He writes in great books, you know. He hews the covers himself from oak and wraps them in the preserved skin of the people he hated the most.' I shuddered visibly at the thought, wrapping my cloak a little tighter around myself. 'He writes plans. I've seen them. Ideas for darkening clouds and making them as permanent in the air as the frost of the north. Strange flying machines that pull shrouds across the sky to block out the sun. Imagine it. A world without humans under endless invented night. And Dracula in his castle, his revenge so horribly complete that there is nothing left to do but look out over a world without art or memory or laughter and know that he did his work well. That he did it all for love.' Suddenly, there was a noise which broke us all out of our reverie. 

'Wait, did you hear that?' Trevor asked. 

'Animals humping in the undergrowth?' Alucard mused. 'Wait - that's not it.' I kicked dirt over the fire, standing quickly. 

'What's the town closest to us?' Trevor asked. 'Is it still Gresit?' 

'Arges is closer to us,' Sypha replied. Trevor ran, finding a tree and vaulting up into it. Sypha placed her hood on, and I walked up to the creatures with Alucard, unsheathing our swords. 

'No further,' Alucard said defiantly, raising his sword in a position of defence. The creatures hissed, storming to us. Alucard used his vampire powers to slash two of the creatures down, and then the rest came charging at us, Trevor leaping into the fight next, and then finally Sypha. We finally overpowered the creatures, except for one, who went flying off into the night with beaten and battered wings. 

We kept moving, until I heard Trevor call out.

'There.' Sypha looked, and there was an old tree, with a large open, gaping crack up the middle. 'That's my tree. We're almost at the house.' 

'It's hard to imagine you playing,' Sypha mused. 

'Yeah,' he chuckled. 'I suppose so.' I heard their merry conversation, sitting on the very back of the wagon with Alucard silently. 'But it was everything, that tree. It was my house and my boat and my fort. Anything I wanted it to be.' He turned back, looking at the house mournfully. 'Goodnight, tree.' We kept moving until we came to an old fountain and then saw the ruins of the house. Tears sprang to my eyes as I beheld the ancient beauty of the ruined Belmont home. We all walked into the main foyer of the ruined house. 

'This was your home?' Sypha asked. 

'Yeah,' I said. 

'You grew up here?' she asked. 

'Yeah,' Trevor replied. He looked across at me. 'We both grew up here.' 

'I can't imagine what it was like to grow up in a single place,' Sypha mused. 

'It was... it was fine,' Trevor grunted. 'Wasn't the worse way to grow up.'

'How old were you when your family home was taken?' I heard Alucard ask. 

'We were both 13, 14 - something like that,' I replied. 

'You've both been on your own since you were 13?' Sypha asked. 

'Maybe 12? Who remembers that sort of thing?' Trevor replied cynically. 

'Twelve,' Alucard muttered. 

'Is there a point to these questions?' Trevor asked. 

'I'm disturbed to find that I had more of a childhood than you both did,' Alucard said. But it was not in jest. It was sincere. 

'And your dad's fucking Dracula,' Trevor bit back. The two chuckled heartily for a moment, and Trevor walked away with Sypha, Alucard glancing at me. I ducked my head, tears still gathering at my corners of my eyes.