[ Anywhere else, he could react differently, more tenderly (how many times, now, have one of them laid kisses on his knuckles and found him something cool to lay his hands upon after incidents of touching the wrong things in the hold?). Later, even if the injury has faded by then, he will. As it is in the moment, he just looks over the burns and nods. They don't look severe. ]
If you're certain.
[ There'll be silver in the face powders as well, he's almost certain. And that's- something he'll almost certainly be adding to those nightmares. Fuck. ]
On to the Matron's quarters, then. I suppose the family records deserve to know what it could have possibly been that turned even Leon Belmont's stomach.
[The advantage of not being subtle is that when something goes wrong, the other two know immediately. As it stands, Alucard simply ignores the pain, and exits the dressing room, glad to be free of it. This final part, it won't be joyous, but it will still be the least of all horrors. The cells will bring forth one set of horrible memories for himself, the chapel threaten all parts of Trevor's faith, and then there shall be the lab which will simply compound whatever is found in the cells.
There's precious comfort in knowing all of this. But it is still a form of comfort, and Alucard will accept it. Even as he keeps walking forward, ears strained, and paying careful attention to smell.]
It may have lessened over the centuries, if fresh flesh and blood was involved. I only smell faint iron.
[ Fine. It'll be fine. He struck Alucard twice with the Vampire Killer once, after all, intending to kill, and the asshole shrugged it off. Brushing against silver shouldn't worry him. It's just gained greater significance in the last year.
The Matron's quarters also contain the dormitories, large rooms leading off the main corridor. They're-
Normal, mostly. Clean. Too many beds cramped into too small a space, but no worse in that way than most orphanages. There's damage to a lot of the beds, slashes in the wood of the frames, loose straw poking through cuts and bites in the sheets, but nothing else. There are toys, mostly broken from too-rough play but still used. There are books, though they seem to have been more chewed at and scribbled upon than read.
And there are more papers. Pictures, this time. And he starts a comment about the similarities to Sypha's art, but it dies in his throat. A family of people he doesn't know - a mother and father and two children, and three figures he does. Even in stick figure form they're recognizable. ]
Oh.
[ The figure with long black hair is fighting fanged stick figures in the next few images, cutting their heads off with a sword. It should be too much of a coincidence that Justine's last thoughts were just lying here to be seen, but- Leon was the last man to walk these halls, after all. Likely he took them and then left them here. ]
Mathias was her godfather. Godfather to both of his apprentice's children.
[Alucard's quiet as they go past one abandoned bed after the next. It's the volume that gets him not for want of cramped quarters but because of the implications behind it. Too many. Maybe there were two to a bed some days. His hands stay all too close to his person, and...
...and they really are just finding more and more papers, aren't they? These don't have familiar handwriting on them (thank God), and then.
Then Trevor explains it all neatly and there's real bile that threatens to rise up Alucard's throat.
The rarity of Alucard's swearing is never unnoticed. Aside from the more jovial variations of fuck you, it just doesn't happen. So it is with all the gravity he has in him that his reaction is a clean, simple, and more vampiric than human hiss of:]
Fuck.
[He hates this. He hates this castle. Everything in it is familiar and twisted and it makes him want to scream.]
[ That had been the reason for Leon's apology. They had promised their protection to this family, and failed them desperately.
He just falls quiet when Alucard swears, letting it linger. Because he's right. This is awful. Everything about this is awful. From Walter and the Matron's method of creating an army who couldn't do anything but follow orders to the constant symbols of cruelty all around to the knowledge that this could come to repeat itself in a few short months, on top of everything else that has already come to repeat itself. He puts his hand on Alucard's back after a few more breaths, leading him out of the room. ]
One more room. One more room and we're done with this wing. We go back after that, get what information we have back to Sypha and return later.
[ They can't, not really. They don't have that much time. But- he can stomach most of this. He's grown up knowing of the worst of Vampires, what things were like before Dracula. He can't stomach watching Alucard tortured like this. ]
[Alucard lets himself be lead out. He wants to protest about leaving this place without completeing a full search as they had planned, but the protest dies before it can even begin. (Soldier.) In all the ways that count, they have what they came here for. A picture of what they'd be up against if they failed and had to fight a reborn Walter rather than whoever it is that holds the key to his return.
The picture is as complete as it needs to be. An impressionist work rather than a still life. That's fine. That's perfect for their needs, and that's what Alucard tells himself.]
Yes. [It's hard to tell what he's agreeing to. Even Alucard is unsure. But anything to speed this the fuck along because this? This makes what his father did look like nothing at all. That should never be.]
And we will not have to drag her through this part. That is a mercy.
[ He doesn't even enter the last room, in the end. There's no need to - they're here to learn of Walter and not of his general, already as dead as she could have been rendered before the centuries of knowledge on how to destroy her kind completely. He just keeps the palm on his hand against Alucard's back, leading him back through the theatre. It's not a long way - it seemed further on the way here because of the need to enter every little room - and yet it still feels like it takes an age to return to the great arc lamp by the door that leads back into the main hall. The horrible noise it makes seems almost soothing now. It's a constant, a far louder version of the hum of the bulbs in the castle, and it's a sound that isn't either of them but that he can easily determine to be safe, something rare in this otherwise silent place. ]
I'm sorry. All of this seemed- normal, to me. I didn't think-
[ Well, he didn't think. He doesn't really need to add to that. ]
There's nothing to apologize for. This was once the standard bearer of normal. That it produces a reaction says more about what changes in four centuries.
[It is the kindest thing Alucard can manage right now. He can't blame Trevor for history. He can rage at the dead for such horrors, but for now, they're just that. Dead.
His boots are covered in dust now. It's a metaphor, but he can't articulate it right now.
Ridiculous that he gravitates to the lamp. He's still a goddamn vampire, isn't he?]
[ He has to at least offer. Were it any other part of the castle he could offer to go alone, and Alucard would argue, but he could at least try. The laboratory isn't like that - he has no way of knowing what would he useful to them. It's also another of the places that Walter had Mathias work, liable to be dreadfully painful.
They've been avoiding too much contact in here - and fuck if it doesn't feel like something horrible is watching - but he pulls Alucard close, pushing his head down onto his chest. Just for a moment. ]
-we can leave. As soon as you need to. We got more than enough from this just by finding your father's notes.
[The laboratory is personal. It's going to be personal they both know it, and they both know it's going to leave scars. They don't need more.
But the pages in Alucard's hand, they hold more than just the solutions for the present problem. They hold hope of restoring the castle's engines. His father's work, the thing that when he was small he delighted in seeing. To watch the castle move, it was beyond joy. He'd beg to stay up late to watch.
That's the thought that plays as Trevor pulls him close. Makes sure Alucard's face is in it's favorite place when the world is overwhelming. That builds resolve.
He pulls away after a few moments.]
We'll leave after we have taken what manuscripts and other books will help.
[It does not escape Alucard's thoughts either that his father never returned here for the notes. But he is not his father, he does not have all this knowledge in his head.]
I want to be certain that we've got all that we need.
[ He takes Alucard's hand as they walk back to the main hall. Because fuck being watched right now and fuck the fear of things repeating themselves. He's not going to just watch him torment himself like this and do nothing. He only lets go of it once he's found the stairway to the laboratories, and it's not the narrow staircase that forces him to let go (though it doesn't help) but the fact that it's probably better for both of them for him not to be holding on to Alucard while reciting Leon's words. It'd be weird. ]
'I have always known my best loves to be the most wise and kind and brilliant souls that graced the earth. And for all the good that they have done, I have always selfishly considered what they might have achieved without constraint. What hearts would Sara have soothed, could she go to the side of any soul in pain, what suffering could she have averted with her soft voice and her caring heart and with the love of all who look upon her? And Mathias, dearest Mathias, who brought such healing and understanding into the world with her patronage. What could he have done with more? What mysteries could he have shone his light upon, what hurts could he have healed, what plagues could he have bested had he not been constrained by time and resources and the frailty of man?
I looked back upon these thoughts as I came to the laboratories. I found my answers, and I found that I misliked them greatly.
The laboratories had been Walter's own, once. I suspect any creature that lives as long as he must eventually turn itself to the mysteries of the world for want of more to learn, for to know all that one cares to know sounds to my ears like the most terrible sort of living death. They fell into disuse long before our mission began, however. Whether Walter found his own mind insufficient to the task of solving the questions he had laid before himself, whether he found himself caring more for matters of conquest than of science, whether he simply consumed his time with frivolities - none of these things I can say for sure. All information that we had suggested that this place had been walled off and forgotten, and yet when I arrived it hummed and glowed with life.
I knew my love must have been turned when I first entered, because the wonders I found could not have sprung from any other mind and yet the amount of work could not have been done by a single man in the time since his disappearance and my coming to this place. It was as beautiful as it was horrible, his brilliant mind unconstrained by all things but the walls of this terrible place. There were what I suspect to be early versions of those captured stars that light this place, pure white light chained between two rods. Notes on terrible poisons. A device the size of a man's head, half metal and half demonic flesh and all of it laced through with magic, that moved from place to place in an instant when agitated. Corpses made to move by energy pulsing through them.
And at the centre of it all, worn to a thread and in chains, he was there. Even when I broke the chains and stood before him he would not meet my eyes and flinched away from my touch. He only placed a single red stone upon the ground before me, and I knew what it was. The Crimson Stone, completed but for those parts of our foe that we would trap within it. I could do nothing more, and so I vowed to him that I would return for him with Sara at my side and that we would leave this evil place together. He spoke, then, only six words.
[They're doubtlessly being observed. Alucard would bet his life on it. Whoever is responsible, they're probably aware that the two are here. Doubtlessly keen to make all these similarities that exist here and now become even more intense. And if that's going to happen then they three will be tender even when it's strange and inappropriate, like this. Trevor's hand is warm. It's the only warm thing in this entire castle. (Home is warm. Home has comforts because his father cared enough to make sure that when the wisdom of ages was applied, it wasn't just for torturing men. Heated floors, lights, all of that, that was a practical application of so much learned. This horrible place had none of that.)
(He could have done so much had his mother not died. All three of them could.)
With the stairs under foot, Alucard moves slowly. If Trevor loses balance, then he needs to be able to move. But he's steadier now, and that means carefully listening to the memorized passage. Ignoring all of Leon's dramatics, honing in on the content.
There's....there's a lot of dramatics. Painful ones, which is why they have to be tuned out right now. (Privately, Alucard wonders if memorizing these things is a form of torture as well.) The most important part is the last one: it's where the stone was created in full. So there should be notes scattered everywhere, and that shall be the focus. Nothing else. Nothing of turning, nothing of why Walter was what he was, nothing of poisons, nothing else at all.
He reaches the top of the stairs. There's no hesitation to move beyond it, to enter the lab itself. This thing, it demands such coldness. It is so easy to summon ice again. (He has not had to for so very long.)]
[ In truth, for Trevor, the dramatics- they do not help. But the alternative is doing through them and picking out the useful pieces of information and actually processing it all to find what is useful. It's easier to just memorize and recite the whole thing, to not think about any of it other than to commit it to memory. It allows him to distance himself from it more easily. It's just another family record he's memorized carefully, with fragments of useful information to be extracted and processed as they become necessary and not before.
The laboratory, at least the first one they come into and the only one that appears to be in use, is a great circular room. One of those lamps hums in its centre, and an inner ring of work surfaces surrounds it. Every inch of the space has been used for something, as if rather than clearing up when work was done Mathias had simply moved to a free table for the wake of working more quickly. And he had worked quickly, because even the great engine below the castle and the arc lamps must have been finished within the space of the month or two that it had taken for Rinaldo and Leon to hunt down Justine, return to find Mathias and Sara missing, and then come to find them and there are so many more things here besides.
The thing that Leon had mentioned is on one of the inner tables, a machine very much like the one below the castle, but in miniature, only about the size of a human head, and appearing just as much organic as mechanical. A maquette of the thing below the castle, attached by metal lines to a small version of one of those lamps which sparks from time to time, incomplete and not able to produce constant light. There are other lamps on the adjacent tables, and the thing hops between them when approached so always to remain as far as possible from contact.
Trevor, naturally, moves from table to table for a while, trying to catch it. Because Belmonts must always struggle to catch Dracula's castle, even its first prototype. ]
[For just a moment, Alucard stands there in the middle of all of this work (torture, he does not think), and watches Trevor. Because he is still a Belmont, and this is the only reaction that they can ever have.]
Reflexes like a cat.
[He says it with too much fondness in his voice, because this is exactly like watching a cat play with string. Or a laser pointer, except that reference isn't available to him yet.
What Alucard focuses on instead is what is spread out on the tables. The order that his father would have worked in, because that's important for making sense of the work. It takes time for him to skim over everything left. But there's an order to it that reveals itself at a second walk through, and all Alucard need do is gather everything up in the appropriate order. Start with one table. Go to the one directly across from it for the second batch. Go one down for the third. Repeat the pattern until everything is gathered.
Then all that's left is to look at the castle's prototype, because this is the only chance to. It's strange seeing the root of this. Not in a bad way, but because it's a reminder of the part of his father Alucard knew best. The scientist, the inventor, the man who when Alucard was old enough, sat down and began to explain portions of this kind of work to him. It was how they bonded as Alucard grew older, because he was a real adult dhampir instead of just a young boy ploughing through lesson after lesson. Gresit was a collaborative work.
It isn't the thing to reflect on in a place like this, but isn't it though? A far warmer memory of his father than this place ever deserves.
The part that is organic is new though. Alucard approaches it, then nods briefly.]
He was making do with what was available. The organic material would have never stood up to the full stress of the work the castle demanded.
[ He's still trying to catch the model, or at least trying to piss it off, poking at it to sent it to the other side and then following it. Exactly like a cat with string. ]
No Belmont ever saw the shit that moved the castle, even the ones that made it inside. Too well protected. We had best guesses, but- none of them anything like this, or like the thing downstairs. Less metal, more- weird magic shit.
Yes. Recall how much metal was in Gresit? Consider how much all of that weighed, in the end. Now multiply it. The weight and stress created for movement, both physical and magical, precludes any kind of organic material. On this small of a scale, it's fine, but to scale up, well. Things fall apart.
[He stands there with his arms folded, considering the prototype for just a moment more. Alucard's arm is heavy with papers now, everything pressed to his side.]
This is all testing the theory, after all. Changes in design were bound to happen.
[ Which, you know, last thing that a Belmont ought to be saying about any iteration of Dracula's castle. But he already calls the place home, so his relationship with the place where so many of his family died can't really get that much weirder.
He finally stops playing with the prototype and looks Alucard over. ]
Is that everything you need? We done with this shitty place for now?
Those ones won't be cute, Alucard. They'll be big fuckoff metal things. [ And, with a somewhat threatening tone. ] If you've forgotten Leon Belmont's wisdom on big metal things not being cute, I could remind you.
[ And he nods. ]
There are others, but they aren't- let's not. There won't be anything of worth there.
[ Leon had had words about the rooms adjoining this one. But Alucard has quite enough of the things his Father was forced to do here with just his inventions. Best not to take him anywhere that human test subjects would have been used. ]
But everything else is sobering. Instinct says that there is still wisdom to be had in those other labs, but the way Trevor has to clarify that no, no that direction lies nothing pleasant is enough to still the tongue.
It's protective, in Trevor's own way. He has the accounts memorized besides, he'd be able to at least guess about what notes were elsewhere.
There's a few books tossed to the side that catch Alucard's eye. He recognizes how they've been ordered, so he scoops them up too.]
''And now', I said 'Let us be gone from this terrible, evil place.' For I was well and truly done with this vampire's shit, and longed to leave him four centuries ago where he fucking belonged.'
[ He holds out his arms, offering to take at least some of the papers. He knows the weight isn't a problem for Alucard, but it's weird not to offer. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cryptsleeper) wrote2018-11-10 11:26 pm
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If you're certain.
[ There'll be silver in the face powders as well, he's almost certain. And that's- something he'll almost certainly be adding to those nightmares. Fuck. ]
On to the Matron's quarters, then. I suppose the family records deserve to know what it could have possibly been that turned even Leon Belmont's stomach.
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[The advantage of not being subtle is that when something goes wrong, the other two know immediately. As it stands, Alucard simply ignores the pain, and exits the dressing room, glad to be free of it. This final part, it won't be joyous, but it will still be the least of all horrors. The cells will bring forth one set of horrible memories for himself, the chapel threaten all parts of Trevor's faith, and then there shall be the lab which will simply compound whatever is found in the cells.
There's precious comfort in knowing all of this. But it is still a form of comfort, and Alucard will accept it. Even as he keeps walking forward, ears strained, and paying careful attention to smell.]
It may have lessened over the centuries, if fresh flesh and blood was involved. I only smell faint iron.
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The Matron's quarters also contain the dormitories, large rooms leading off the main corridor. They're-
Normal, mostly. Clean. Too many beds cramped into too small a space, but no worse in that way than most orphanages. There's damage to a lot of the beds, slashes in the wood of the frames, loose straw poking through cuts and bites in the sheets, but nothing else. There are toys, mostly broken from too-rough play but still used. There are books, though they seem to have been more chewed at and scribbled upon than read.
And there are more papers. Pictures, this time. And he starts a comment about the similarities to Sypha's art, but it dies in his throat. A family of people he doesn't know - a mother and father and two children, and three figures he does. Even in stick figure form they're recognizable. ]
Oh.
[ The figure with long black hair is fighting fanged stick figures in the next few images, cutting their heads off with a sword. It should be too much of a coincidence that Justine's last thoughts were just lying here to be seen, but- Leon was the last man to walk these halls, after all. Likely he took them and then left them here. ]
Mathias was her godfather. Godfather to both of his apprentice's children.
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...and they really are just finding more and more papers, aren't they? These don't have familiar handwriting on them (thank God), and then.
Then Trevor explains it all neatly and there's real bile that threatens to rise up Alucard's throat.
The rarity of Alucard's swearing is never unnoticed. Aside from the more jovial variations of fuck you, it just doesn't happen. So it is with all the gravity he has in him that his reaction is a clean, simple, and more vampiric than human hiss of:]
Fuck.
[He hates this. He hates this castle. Everything in it is familiar and twisted and it makes him want to scream.]
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He just falls quiet when Alucard swears, letting it linger. Because he's right. This is awful. Everything about this is awful. From Walter and the Matron's method of creating an army who couldn't do anything but follow orders to the constant symbols of cruelty all around to the knowledge that this could come to repeat itself in a few short months, on top of everything else that has already come to repeat itself. He puts his hand on Alucard's back after a few more breaths, leading him out of the room. ]
One more room. One more room and we're done with this wing. We go back after that, get what information we have back to Sypha and return later.
[ They can't, not really. They don't have that much time. But- he can stomach most of this. He's grown up knowing of the worst of Vampires, what things were like before Dracula. He can't stomach watching Alucard tortured like this. ]
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The picture is as complete as it needs to be. An impressionist work rather than a still life. That's fine. That's perfect for their needs, and that's what Alucard tells himself.]
Yes. [It's hard to tell what he's agreeing to. Even Alucard is unsure. But anything to speed this the fuck along because this? This makes what his father did look like nothing at all. That should never be.]
And we will not have to drag her through this part. That is a mercy.
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I'm sorry. All of this seemed- normal, to me. I didn't think-
[ Well, he didn't think. He doesn't really need to add to that. ]
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[It is the kindest thing Alucard can manage right now. He can't blame Trevor for history. He can rage at the dead for such horrors, but for now, they're just that. Dead.
His boots are covered in dust now. It's a metaphor, but he can't articulate it right now.
Ridiculous that he gravitates to the lamp. He's still a goddamn vampire, isn't he?]
Laboratory. We take what will help.
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[ He has to at least offer. Were it any other part of the castle he could offer to go alone, and Alucard would argue, but he could at least try. The laboratory isn't like that - he has no way of knowing what would he useful to them. It's also another of the places that Walter had Mathias work, liable to be dreadfully painful.
They've been avoiding too much contact in here - and fuck if it doesn't feel like something horrible is watching - but he pulls Alucard close, pushing his head down onto his chest. Just for a moment. ]
-we can leave. As soon as you need to. We got more than enough from this just by finding your father's notes.
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But the pages in Alucard's hand, they hold more than just the solutions for the present problem. They hold hope of restoring the castle's engines. His father's work, the thing that when he was small he delighted in seeing. To watch the castle move, it was beyond joy. He'd beg to stay up late to watch.
That's the thought that plays as Trevor pulls him close. Makes sure Alucard's face is in it's favorite place when the world is overwhelming. That builds resolve.
He pulls away after a few moments.]
We'll leave after we have taken what manuscripts and other books will help.
[It does not escape Alucard's thoughts either that his father never returned here for the notes. But he is not his father, he does not have all this knowledge in his head.]
I want to be certain that we've got all that we need.
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'I have always known my best loves to be the most wise and kind and brilliant souls that graced the earth. And for all the good that they have done, I have always selfishly considered what they might have achieved without constraint. What hearts would Sara have soothed, could she go to the side of any soul in pain, what suffering could she have averted with her soft voice and her caring heart and with the love of all who look upon her? And Mathias, dearest Mathias, who brought such healing and understanding into the world with her patronage. What could he have done with more? What mysteries could he have shone his light upon, what hurts could he have healed, what plagues could he have bested had he not been constrained by time and resources and the frailty of man?
I looked back upon these thoughts as I came to the laboratories. I found my answers, and I found that I misliked them greatly.
The laboratories had been Walter's own, once. I suspect any creature that lives as long as he must eventually turn itself to the mysteries of the world for want of more to learn, for to know all that one cares to know sounds to my ears like the most terrible sort of living death. They fell into disuse long before our mission began, however. Whether Walter found his own mind insufficient to the task of solving the questions he had laid before himself, whether he found himself caring more for matters of conquest than of science, whether he simply consumed his time with frivolities - none of these things I can say for sure. All information that we had suggested that this place had been walled off and forgotten, and yet when I arrived it hummed and glowed with life.
I knew my love must have been turned when I first entered, because the wonders I found could not have sprung from any other mind and yet the amount of work could not have been done by a single man in the time since his disappearance and my coming to this place. It was as beautiful as it was horrible, his brilliant mind unconstrained by all things but the walls of this terrible place. There were what I suspect to be early versions of those captured stars that light this place, pure white light chained between two rods. Notes on terrible poisons. A device the size of a man's head, half metal and half demonic flesh and all of it laced through with magic, that moved from place to place in an instant when agitated. Corpses made to move by energy pulsing through them.
And at the centre of it all, worn to a thread and in chains, he was there. Even when I broke the chains and stood before him he would not meet my eyes and flinched away from my touch. He only placed a single red stone upon the ground before me, and I knew what it was. The Crimson Stone, completed but for those parts of our foe that we would trap within it. I could do nothing more, and so I vowed to him that I would return for him with Sara at my side and that we would leave this evil place together. He spoke, then, only six words.
"I have done what I must."
And I did not understand.'
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(He could have done so much had his mother not died. All three of them could.)
With the stairs under foot, Alucard moves slowly. If Trevor loses balance, then he needs to be able to move. But he's steadier now, and that means carefully listening to the memorized passage. Ignoring all of Leon's dramatics, honing in on the content.
There's....there's a lot of dramatics. Painful ones, which is why they have to be tuned out right now. (Privately, Alucard wonders if memorizing these things is a form of torture as well.) The most important part is the last one: it's where the stone was created in full. So there should be notes scattered everywhere, and that shall be the focus. Nothing else. Nothing of turning, nothing of why Walter was what he was, nothing of poisons, nothing else at all.
He reaches the top of the stairs. There's no hesitation to move beyond it, to enter the lab itself. This thing, it demands such coldness. It is so easy to summon ice again. (He has not had to for so very long.)]
no subject
The laboratory, at least the first one they come into and the only one that appears to be in use, is a great circular room. One of those lamps hums in its centre, and an inner ring of work surfaces surrounds it. Every inch of the space has been used for something, as if rather than clearing up when work was done Mathias had simply moved to a free table for the wake of working more quickly. And he had worked quickly, because even the great engine below the castle and the arc lamps must have been finished within the space of the month or two that it had taken for Rinaldo and Leon to hunt down Justine, return to find Mathias and Sara missing, and then come to find them and there are so many more things here besides.
The thing that Leon had mentioned is on one of the inner tables, a machine very much like the one below the castle, but in miniature, only about the size of a human head, and appearing just as much organic as mechanical. A maquette of the thing below the castle, attached by metal lines to a small version of one of those lamps which sparks from time to time, incomplete and not able to produce constant light. There are other lamps on the adjacent tables, and the thing hops between them when approached so always to remain as far as possible from contact.
Trevor, naturally, moves from table to table for a while, trying to catch it. Because Belmonts must always struggle to catch Dracula's castle, even its first prototype. ]
Shit, it's like the castle had a weird ugly baby.
no subject
Reflexes like a cat.
[He says it with too much fondness in his voice, because this is exactly like watching a cat play with string. Or a laser pointer, except that reference isn't available to him yet.
What Alucard focuses on instead is what is spread out on the tables. The order that his father would have worked in, because that's important for making sense of the work. It takes time for him to skim over everything left. But there's an order to it that reveals itself at a second walk through, and all Alucard need do is gather everything up in the appropriate order. Start with one table. Go to the one directly across from it for the second batch. Go one down for the third. Repeat the pattern until everything is gathered.
Then all that's left is to look at the castle's prototype, because this is the only chance to. It's strange seeing the root of this. Not in a bad way, but because it's a reminder of the part of his father Alucard knew best. The scientist, the inventor, the man who when Alucard was old enough, sat down and began to explain portions of this kind of work to him. It was how they bonded as Alucard grew older, because he was a real adult dhampir instead of just a young boy ploughing through lesson after lesson. Gresit was a collaborative work.
It isn't the thing to reflect on in a place like this, but isn't it though? A far warmer memory of his father than this place ever deserves.
The part that is organic is new though. Alucard approaches it, then nods briefly.]
He was making do with what was available. The organic material would have never stood up to the full stress of the work the castle demanded.
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[ He's still trying to catch the model, or at least trying to piss it off, poking at it to sent it to the other side and then following it. Exactly like a cat with string. ]
No Belmont ever saw the shit that moved the castle, even the ones that made it inside. Too well protected. We had best guesses, but- none of them anything like this, or like the thing downstairs. Less metal, more- weird magic shit.
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[He stands there with his arms folded, considering the prototype for just a moment more. Alucard's arm is heavy with papers now, everything pressed to his side.]
This is all testing the theory, after all. Changes in design were bound to happen.
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[ Which, you know, last thing that a Belmont ought to be saying about any iteration of Dracula's castle. But he already calls the place home, so his relationship with the place where so many of his family died can't really get that much weirder.
He finally stops playing with the prototype and looks Alucard over. ]
Is that everything you need? We done with this shitty place for now?
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[Now he's just being an ass. A very, very serious ass, but at least he's joking to any degree. That's a good sign.]
Is this the only room?
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[ And he nods. ]
There are others, but they aren't- let's not. There won't be anything of worth there.
[ Leon had had words about the rooms adjoining this one. But Alucard has quite enough of the things his Father was forced to do here with just his inventions. Best not to take him anywhere that human test subjects would have been used. ]
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But everything else is sobering. Instinct says that there is still wisdom to be had in those other labs, but the way Trevor has to clarify that no, no that direction lies nothing pleasant is enough to still the tongue.
It's protective, in Trevor's own way. He has the accounts memorized besides, he'd be able to at least guess about what notes were elsewhere.
There's a few books tossed to the side that catch Alucard's eye. He recognizes how they've been ordered, so he scoops them up too.]
Then let us depart.
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[ He holds out his arms, offering to take at least some of the papers. He knows the weight isn't a problem for Alucard, but it's weird not to offer. ]
That one was me.
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That was longer than it should have been. I think memorizing those journals is doing things to your mind. You're speech is becoming downright flowery.
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Is that a complaint, my very dearest?
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Fuck you.