[ It's very strange to see the Forest of Eternal Night in daylight. But then, it hasn't been known by that name for some four centuries, and the sun returned to it when Walter's influence faded.
But clearly it didn't fade entirely. This place isn't protected by the same spells as the estate, no, but it has a similar air to it, driving away everything from travelers to wildlife to wind. It's silent, and that's- probably appropriate, but it's still strange. The place where Dracula had been human is trapped in eternal life, bright and warm and devoid of humans but filled with whatever had been there before, the horses and the dog and the animals and birds that ran wild in the land around it. The place where he had died as a vampire is trapped in the strangest place that it could be and the warmest place that he can imagine, filled with love.
And the place between them, where he had ended and begun, not trapped anywhere by anything and yet deathly silent. ]
The trees bent away from Walter's castle, because it was the source of the darkness. That was how he navigated.
[ He's committed Leon's journals to memory. What else can he do but to keep himself sharp and to learn what he can? The information isn't as useful four hundred years later, with the trees growing used to the sun being in its normal place and growing upward as they ought to instead. But some of them, the oldest, still bend in that strange way. ]
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But clearly it didn't fade entirely. This place isn't protected by the same spells as the estate, no, but it has a similar air to it, driving away everything from travelers to wildlife to wind. It's silent, and that's- probably appropriate, but it's still strange. The place where Dracula had been human is trapped in eternal life, bright and warm and devoid of humans but filled with whatever had been there before, the horses and the dog and the animals and birds that ran wild in the land around it. The place where he had died as a vampire is trapped in the strangest place that it could be and the warmest place that he can imagine, filled with love.
And the place between them, where he had ended and begun, not trapped anywhere by anything and yet deathly silent. ]
The trees bent away from Walter's castle, because it was the source of the darkness. That was how he navigated.
[ He's committed Leon's journals to memory. What else can he do but to keep himself sharp and to learn what he can? The information isn't as useful four hundred years later, with the trees growing used to the sun being in its normal place and growing upward as they ought to instead. But some of them, the oldest, still bend in that strange way. ]