cryptsleeper | 20s AU Post

20s AU Post

Current Carmilla plot outline
--Post-fire, Carmilla and Mr. Peanut team up mostly to use each other. Carmilla's spent the past several months (since November, it is now February 1925) networking, and it's clear to her that Alucard's not suited for the position and that the other two are the obvious weakness. Mr Peanut needs something back, so this is perfect on her end. Mr Peanut can only imagine the joys of vampire blood in his work, and he'd like an army of vampires for his own ends.
--Shit stirring from Mr Peanut (all of March?)
--Mr Peanut also begins to sell mis Miracle Serum, which has vampire blood in it.
--Gang is very much trying to murder Mr Peanut during this.
--Start of April, vampire gets a call from one of the blood bank contacts that 3 patients have come in and are displaying some bizarre signs. Investigation yields the fact that they're in process of turning, and they've all taken the same serum.
--Additional investigation reveals O FUCK IT MR PEANUT
--Meanwhile Carmilla's been made aware of a familiar she didn't sire, so she knows something's up. Big fight with Mr. Peanut and thus Mr. Peanut is left depowered
--Gang commits a murder
--Carmilla's well sured up on her contacts now, and it's time for open rebellion (mid-April)
--In a more subtle attempt to let Alucard just step aside, she cuts the breaks on demon car and shows up to gloat/suggest he not pull a dad and go to deal with his grief quietly while she runs the city. The how he wants to do it is up to him (black widow joke goes here.) Treffy and Sypha walk in.
--1 week of straight up rebellion; feedings, no help from allies, need to do damage control instead of fight carmilla, every dracula rule is
--MEANWHILE IN GRAVITY FALLS, triangle shows Vlad what's up to try and psyche him out, somehow this finalyl snaps Vlad out of his depression and he heads home
--Just in time for Alucard and Carmilla to be tearing each other to bits in one of the bayous, it's not going well
--Vlad coming in means the king of vampires is accosted by a belmont with a pair of blessed knitting needles and a speaker with a fucking gun and he's just like what the shit happened to the world while i was gone
--Wards around the fight means that only demon car can break the wards, everyone has to pile in.
--Carmilla gets her ass kicked AND SENT TO THE JUSTICE DIMENSION

THEN THERE WERE FAERIES.
--Prior to all of this the vampire and Sypha have done a shit ton of research on how to get their Belmont back
--Sypha has also been practicing debating with dad, which leaves everyone Very Tired.
--When Trevor is actually snatched up (1 year after marriage, it takes fae effort. Taking Arn's shape fails, so it's a lot more kidnapping by force), Sypha and Alucard go into Faerie
--But they're playing this as politics, not as heroes rescuing their damsel, so that means the faeries are just "wait what now excuse u?"
--There are 3 gates and 3 trials (the particulars we're still bullshitting.) Each is asked to sacrifice 3 things. (Alucard: voice, his titles as bestowed upon by his father and his people, i forget the third; Sypha: her human form (she's a birb), fuck what were the other two)
--They enter the court at the end of the third trial. After LITERALLY ALL THE TITLES Sypha declares she Speaks for Trevor Belmont
--Claim debate over Trevor, turns out that the rules are in Sypha's favor.
--But that means debating to leave Fae without giving up what they've chosen.
--Sypha lawyers it all out, Alucard is a safety deposit and hangs out with Fae!Trevor
--In the end, safe passage out of Faerie consists of Sypha giving up her memory of the necromancer (billed as a great mage she studied under), the vampire gives up his immortality, and Trevor is replaced with Carmilla (dad was aware of this option and OK with it), but Trevor has his ability to swear taken. He now soundslike a rubber ducky when he tries
--Everyone gets home okay, except for the AU of this AU where the gang fails, but Trevor's on their doorstep like a bat out of Hell because time doesn't work right and he's been in Hell for a WHILE.

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[So this will have to be the routine for now. He picks Trevor up from knitting club. They talk in the car about something nice. Trevor gets to pick dinner for the night. He'll wolf out and visit Trevor here.

Easy to do. Trevor will figure out that it's Alucard eventually, but not right now. There's more happy noises to be made (that don't sound like Alucard noises as far as Alucard knows), and it's been a while since he's been in wolf form. He's forgotten how relaxing it can be in this form.]

The first is seeming like the safest option, I think. But it's a lot of work, none of it I can help with. I don't like putting forward something that has me do nothing while the two of you do so much.

[ He can't even attend the gatherings with them, since they need to wait for the time to be right for Alucard to demonstrate how he has brought the Belmont Family to heel. And also they probably need to wait for Alucard to develop a strong enough stomach not to be terribly ill at the idea of demonstrating such a thing. ]

As for monitoring him - that I can help with. I've not used a distance mirror in a long time, but I can use- [ He gestures to his desk, at his badly drawn map and jar of sand. ] -that shit.

Mm. But the important thing is, it's a plan. And if need be, you can do part, and I can do part, and he can do part. And then he is at least not left wondering what to do about this all on his own.

[She glances toward the map, though, and her eyebrows go up.]

Can you show me, sometime? How you do that.

[The castle is, naturally, well protected from hurricanes. It was not a defense that his father initally had for it, but one created after the first major storm the castle experienced. To call it a novelty would be an actual understatement, and that first storm had demanded castle repairs.

Not so much these days.

Alucard's lived through a few of the storms, he remembers the worst one happened before he was in double digits. His parents both explained the mechanics of the storm, made sure he understood how it worked and it was just going to be a part of living here, and that the castle would stand tall through all of it.

Not an approach Alucard would try with Trevor here and now. It was, in fact, far smarter to encourage the creation of a new map as a way to track the storm itself, and then a reliance on the sand to see how things fared in the immediate aftermath. There were more than enough spare rooms for making a mini-HQ of sorts, and that was where they were now.

The viewing mirror is currently watching a few trees sway wickedly in the wind, but Alucard's eyes are on the map.]

Half a day left to wait all of this out, from the looks of it.

And you're sure that this isn't someone trying to move the castle?

[ In truth, it's not even the trembling of the castle that's concerning him. It's the manic energy in the air, so thick that he can taste it. Every instinct he has, Belmont and Fae alike, is screaming at him that there is something massive, something terrible, that there is some great monster than simply cannot be fought.

Which is true, in a sense. It's like- it's familiar in a lot of ways, though none of the parts of it that seem familiar are related to weather. It feels more distant than shelling, at least from the relative safety of the castle. Less immediately bloody and terrible than machine gun fire. But all without the sole comfort that there's a human being behind it, one that might at any time see sense and stop.

He's tracking kinetic energy, right now, which is usually a useless thing to track (everything moves, all the time. it's potentially useful in rural areas but in a city full of people it's just a mess of sand following roads.) but that right now makes a good gauge for the force of the storm. The sand swirls about restlessly where there is flooding, and darts across the map for wind, turning and travelling around the edges to return to its starting point to move again like the water of a fountain. But his hand is on the charcoal again, and he stares at an empty section of the stone floor that could hold another anchoring glyph, just in case this is an attempt to steal the castle. ]

Do you think he'll accept it?

[ Trevor doesn't have a whole lot of faith in their vampire, sadly. ]

I'll try. Your magic doesn't have components, does it? It just needs you.

Positive. Five years back was far worse than this, the winds were even higher. New spells were put in place to make sure nothing happened.

[If Alucard was being selfish, he'd say that he preferred this kind of an emergency to any others he could think of. Storms, at least in the moment, were pretty straightforward to deal with. You hunkered down. You let science tell you what was going on and when it was likely to be over, and then you went out to deal with all the fallen branches on the property. Zero effort.

Not so much this time. Satisfied with the current information from the storm tracker, Alucard walks over to where the population map Trevor's invented is and he looks it over carefully. He taps down where the flooding is happening.]

This area takes a while to drain. It's going to pen a few people in for an additional day, since running water can be an individual-specific things. [Alucard pauses, then realizes Trevor's looking at the floor.]

The castle engines aren't moving, Belmont.

Fine, fine.

[ He's not entirely convinced, but he puts the charcoal down and looks back at the map. ]

I'm not sure bringing blood there from the hospitals is going to be an option. [ What was it that Sypha said? 'Try to be nice'? Well here he is, trying to let his first concern about vampires be their well being. Or at least controlling their hunger. ] I expect they'll be facing shortages. Do you think Sypha can bridge it? Tanti and I can make ourselves a presence there. Should keep anyone from getting too desperate.

[ They're yet to reveal he's a Belmont. But just 'A hunter who works with Florence' is enough to make some vampires wary. ]

No, it isn't, the living are going to need it when this clears. That's the priority.

[Alucard folds his arms over his chest, eyes still fixed on the map.]

I think that'll work, especially since Florence will have her enchanted galoshes which she refuses to share the spell for. [She can walk on water, Trevor.] There's also been a little bit of stockpiling between myself and the few allies of this house in expectation of storm season.

[The viewing mirror changes again. There's flooding in the streets.]

...just Tanti, then, if we're not having Sypha bridge it. I'm not having her carry me again.

[ Being carried around by a little old lady who is actually half your size is both uncomfortable and embarrassing. ]

Where will you need to be seen, in the aftermath of this?

Oh, I missed the story of her needing to do this.

[There's that little bit of mischief in Alucard's tone, the kind reversed for Not Work. He wants this story badly but...

...but work.]

I can't answer that until we see what's been flooded the worst and if anyone has had actual damage to their homes. The latter will require quick work if it happens, due to threat of sun exposure.

You did miss it. That was deliberate.

[ He looks back at the vampire map while Alucard talks, keeping track of the impact of the storm upon those. A few smaller piles of sand have fallen still, where the others shrink and grow slightly, almost like they're breathing. ]

Three younger vampires dead. One in the flooded area, likely running water. The other two are both in this area. Could mean sun exposure, though I'd expect the cloud cover to buy them enough time to find other shelter. Could be any number of other fucking things, in this-

[ And something strikes the castle. There's no damage, of course there's no damage, but there is a loud fucking noise and another shudder. Trevor flinches (he didn't even do that when having bones reset, not that violently), hissing out breath through his teeth and grabbing at the charcoal again. He doesn't scrawl anything on the ground this time but fuck, he hates this. ]

I think he is inclined to accept good sense.

[That's not actually an answer, Sypha, but good job nimbly deflecting that one.]

Not exactly. Fundamentally, yes, it only needs me, but sometimes I use other things, as tricks or as focuses. And I can make magic stick to things, which makes them a little magic themselves. But I don't need...eye of newt and hair of cat and a bubbling cauldron, or anything like that.

I- was that meant to be an insult? It sounded insult-ish.

[ But. Not being awful, so he shrugs. If anything, he sounds kind of amused. ]

Can you tell me about the focuses? That sounds the closest to some of what I use.

Well, um — hold on, stay here. Let me go get something, and it will make showing you easier.

[She leaves him there, just briefly, and after a minute the sound of her footsteps on the stairs is audible; a minute or two passes, and then the footsteps thud-thud-thud again, and then she's back with an item in each hand, which she brings over to show him.

First, the one in her left hand — a deck of tarot cards that have clearly seen a lot of use, or at least have been made to look that way.]

This is a trick. Say you've come to me, and you want me to tell your future. That is clearly ridiculous, but I want to make sure you sit and stay a while with me, so I look you over, make you talk to me a little, learn something about you, and —

[She brings her free hand palm-up near the short side edge of the card deck, and with a slight swivel of her hand, a single card shifts to jut out of the deck.]

I make the card I want jump into my hand. The cards themselves are not magic; the magic is making the one I want appear when I need it to.

[Somewhat whimsically, she flips over the card — the Nine of Wands — and sets it face-up on top of the deck before placing the whole thing aside. Then, she takes up the other item she'd brought — a piece of paper with writing on it.]

This is a focus. On this paper is a spell. I don't know the spell, and it is not something I could simply cast whenever I please, like making fire or creating ice. But I could use this paper to cast the spell on it, once, and it would work. But then I could not cast that spell again, unless I had another paper like this.

[ He's taken a sheet of his paper and the charcoal by now, though he's yet to do anything with it. ]

Bad job. That guy has far more curtain poles than I do.

[ He listens otherwise, though, occasionally glancing to and from the card in an attempt to figure out of that's a stealthy callout. The focus is interesting. ]

That's- similar to this kind of spellcraft, I think. Not the same. I know the spells that I'm using. It's the- there's a lot of decisions involved in even the simplest spell. Hundreds, most of them you probably make without really thinking. I'm- [ ...how to put it. ] -not good with decisions. At best, I wouldn't be able to use the spell at all. At worst, it'd end up coming out as a reflection of who I am, rather than what I want it to do. And I'm an asshole. The written components of the spells are- I suppose you could call them a declaration of intent.

[ Look English is his fourth language he doesn't realize that he just accidentally said that this involves marrying magic. ]

I...think I see. So you have to be taught the spell, yes? Like — say, baking a cake. For you, magic needs the recipe and the ingredients already made for you, and following them is what adds the intent.

[if you like that spell so much why don't you MARRY IT]

Or like...sewing. You can make a dress, but you need the pattern pieces, and the materials, and to cut them out properly and stitch them together. You are sewing a spell together, with all of these components.

I'm not sure what led you to believe I'd be good with baking or dressmaking metaphors. [ Oh just you wait, Trevor. Just you wait. ] But you're about right, I think. Even if a spell has no other components, I'd need the written part. And the need for it to be written means I'd at least need a surface to write on and something to write with, which means they become components in themselves.

[ He draws a rectangle on the paper. He's not putting any effort into making it a decent match for the shape of the room itself, in part because he can't be bothered but also because he was told not to map the castle. ]

The main components for this are sand, salt, charcoal and water. There's other shit, but it's all more specialized. This, for example- [ He finishes drawing the spell out below his rectangle, then pours sand onto the map, where it stacks itself into two piles, representing himself and Sypha. ] -technically would be much easier with the spell drawn in ink, rather than charcoal. It doesn't make much of a difference at this scale, but if I wanted to find a specific human in the city, ink correlates to human intelligence and invention, where charcoal is the classical element of fire. It would make it easier to use the ink to find a person.

Hm!

[She's leaning over to watch him, unmindful of personal space, as her eyes track over the movements of his charcoal and the way that he sets up his spell components.]

So the base format matters, but changing the components alters what it is...say, targeted to do. And if, instead of ink or charcoal, you used blood — would that be the best way of finding a vampire?

[Sypha that's sort of morbid.]

...Hypothetically!

Blood is complicated. The general rule for it is please don't, not unless it's something to do with that specific person. You generally don't want parts of people's bodies getting mixed in with your magic. Which- probably also true for baking cakes, I suppose.

[ Not that that has ever once stopped him. But Belmont blood is a pretty specific component in itself. ]

Grave dirt, for vampires. You can use it to replace the sand, else mix it with water and make the written component with mud. Generally don't need the specific components for that, though. Belmont and all. Vampire bullshit comes naturally. Fishmeal for werewolves. Whole fucking list of different components for mages, though most of them are better to track the magic than the mage themselves.

I'll ask Sypha later.

[Alucard would rather cling to something more pleasant, but...no. In this room that's harder to do, this room is for work. So he switches the viewing mirror to right outside of the castle itself, tsking softly. There are now trees laid across the road that leads to the castle's gates, which means dealing with that before anything else can be addressed.]

They're young, so they're not used to the particular skill set needed for weathering a storm. I know one of them grew up in this state, so the concept of a hurricane isn't new but...

[Then there's the hurricane again, and Alucard catches Trevor's reaction. It's hard not to.]

We're in the worst part of it. It'll pass soon.

Fuck, fuck.

[ He's been through worse, he's been through so much worse, but he knew to expect it back then. This was just supposed to be weather. Just a storm, like the ones back in Romania. Just a burst river, maybe a few damaged or fallen homes, maybe four or five deaths in total.

He's just about managing to not scrawl on the floor. Or worse, not to just put his back against the wall and wait to be buried. All of this is familiar in a horrible way. But he breathes, and he manages to calm down at least enough to think again and grew up in this state and.

He went and did it again, didn't he? Fucked up the 'be nice' order. Forgot that vampires are people. People who apparently know each other and give a shit about each other, in this part of the world. ]

-did you know them? I'm- sorry. [ The panic hasn't entirely left his tone, but there's an attempt at sympathy there now. A little shame. ]

Hmmmm.

[She's listening intently, taking mental notes as he rattles off the various components, cataloguing them internally and making sense of them as he describes.]

But for a specific person, you would want to use a specific component from them personally, if you could? Say I did want to find a very specific person. I would need the map to direct me, but then I would need something specific of theirs as well?

[Hmmm, redux.]

And if I wanted to find them over a great area, I could start with a very vague map and narrow it down from there with more and more specific maps. Yes?

It would help. Usually you'd want an item belonging to them rather than a part of their body, just to be safe. Hair tends to be safe, too. Blood gets things fucked up because it's gone through the heart and the brain. It's one of those intent things. Once you have too much of a person involved in your spell, it can start to change it, make it do what they want.

[ He taps on the map. ]

For most people, if you're using a spell like this, the worst you'll get is bad information if they don't want to be found. But if you're targeting someone who can use magic- say I was using this to find you, but using your blood. You'd know that the spell was being cast, you'd know that it was me doing it and where I was doing it from, and you'd probably be able to use that connection to focus intent on me and set me on fire or something.

[ It'd be cool. ]

Incidentally, that would be why components for tracking mages tend to focus on their magic rather than on the mage themselves. [ Oh right, and the other question, because he went off on a tangent about Sypha setting him on fire. ] You could. You don't need the maps, really. The spell'll work without them, it'll just be useless because there'll be no context for the results.

[There's a moment that Alucard debates responding to Trevor's question. He didn't really know them, they didn't travel in the same circles, the kind of coldness that means Alucard's doing his damn job. Trevor is, however, making an effort here. Being nice, he's trying to care.

He's also reacting to the weather too strongly, and that means Alucard dismisses the viewing mirror for now. Slips into his wolf form. Walks over to where Trevor is and immediately tries to get under one of Trevor's hands, because Trevor's usually better off when Alucard's not person shaped.

This seems like a good time to be not person shaped.]

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20s AU Post

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