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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[By the time Alucard puts down the phone ten minutes later, there is an agreement in place. Sypha will drive to two blocks away from the address Carmilla has indicated. Alucard and Trevor will meet her there, and all will pile in the demon car for the rest of the way, because the car has proven that it too would like to run over the necromancer very much. It also means that Sypha's the one driving, which neither Trevor or Alucard are happy about, but it is simply how it shall be. What to do with the necromancer after that shall be dictated by the state of the man in question, and how much Dracula's Laws override a far more private and personal matter which Sypha gets the final say in.

It all leads to a small warehouse complex, all sturdily built things near the train tracks so that shipments can be sent and recieved. Deep, deep in the center is where the necromancer's operation is, and there's even a little tin sign on the main entrance that proudly annouces that the building is home to Facilier's Ruby Tonic: A Miracle Draught for All Ills! That pride is tarnished by distinct claw marks over the tin, and the door that is now very much open.

(Somehow, it is still on it's hinges.)

There's an order for entering. Trevor first. Then Alucard. Sypha last, because even if the necromancer is subdued, there is no denying the extreme paranoia of the other two in letting Sypha (theirs) get too close to the thing again.

The demon car is right next to the door. (They did not park it there.) Who knew a demon could be such a comfort?]

[ He's still shaken. The entire car journey has been spent trying to banish the horrified chill from himself, keep his trembling hands still.

He owes Alucard an apology. Being puppeted around is a horrible, horrible feeling. He can still feel the ghost of Carmilla's presence inside him somehow, hands pressing against the inside of his ribcage, and he wants to try uselessly to vomit her out.

By the time they arrive, he's largely managed to steel himself and calm down. His hand is on the whip's handle as he heads in, and the first thing that hits him is the smell of it. The incense is thick, enough for the smoke of it to bring on the beginnings of a headache even in him, unaffected by the stuff. Alucard had been rendered incapable of persuing back at the circus with even a little of it. With so much, and used on a new fledgling-

-there may still be risk, but it's unlikely to come from their target. ]

Sypha, you stay close to Alucard. Put him between you and anything that attacks. [ Even if he can't fight in this place, he can still function as a wall of vampire between Sypha and danger. ] Be ready to drag him around if you need to. Alucard, wolf until we can be certain this isn't a trap. You'll breathe less of this shit in closer to the ground.

[There's an irony, somehow, to the fact that they've been brought back so close to the train tracks — or maybe it's not really an irony at all, but a horrible recognition that comes creeping slowly the longer it's dwelt upon. Speakers travel by train, and not in the passenger cars but in empty cargo containers, small knots of them packed in where no one will see and no one will account for one that goes missing, save the Speakers themselves.

It's a hunting ground for a necromancer with aims like this one, to have a facility of his own near the train tracks. That much isn't lost on her. The basement had been bad enough; who knows what they might find when they enter the warehouse here, in the place that might well be the first stop for a kidnapped prize?

Still, she's ready. She has to be, because they have to see an end to this.

Even so, listening to Trevor's assessment of their battle plan makes her skin crawl with apprehension — half because of what they might find within, and half because the enemy that lies within (or may lie within, at least) will have to know that the easiest way to make any plan of theirs fall apart in an instant is to target her, and simply watch Trevor and Alucard go mad from trying to keep her from harm.

She grits her teeth, fingers curling in on her palms and leaving crescent-shaped marks from her nails in the skin.]

Be careful of the walls, the both of you, and watch the floor. It is one of his favorite defenses, to hide traps where you walk.

Understood.

[The smell is the first thing that hits. There has never been any denying that the incense renders the vampire almost useless in a fight, and here it is so thick he chokes on it. How Carmilla powered through any of it, he doesn't know. He doesn't want to think about her right now. Alucard chokes from the first wave of the smell, and pulls his shirt up and over his nose in a feeble attempt to block the stuff.]

Can we at least dispel a cloud of it from where we walk? I...

[He doesn't need to finish the rest. They both know, and Alucard presses closer to Sypha to the point that he's nearly up against her. He knows better than to do that too, but every nerve of his is on edge, terrified, wanting to claw at the walls.

There's a mercy in all of this, and that's the incense doesn't dull his hearing.]

He's towards your right, Trevor.

[ He isn't prepared for this.

In truth, there is very little he could do to be prepared for this. Seeing a trap in this smoke would be a challenge, but he has one flask of holy water at least. He can sprinkle it on the ground below him, listen for the sound of the droplets hitting the floor, be ready to move if there's hissing when they do.

(A Simon Belmont, it was, who first documented this trick. He used it to find places where Dracula's magic hid false floors that led into traps or the jaws of monsters.)

It's a slow process, but they make progress nonetheless. One step at a time, until even Trevor's non-vampire hearing can pick up a low gurgling. Only visible almost too late through the smoke, a three fingered hand launches toward the three of them, and Trevor puts himself between it and the other two before it falters and breaks apart and sinks into the ground, like a wave crashing against the shore.

And beyond it, he's there. Bound to a chair that's fallen to the ground, beaten half to death. His mouth is still filled with that red tonic and he can't seem to turn his head fully enough to let it spill out. He breathes through his nose, but occasionally with a horrible gurgle he swallows more of his terrible medicine. And just as the tonic bubbles in his mouth, so his shadows bubble on the ground like tar, lashing out but breaking apart too early to do any damage.

Forgemastery is human magic, after all. ]

[It's him. There he is, the same man whose shadows had pulled her through a mirror while the gouges in her arms leftover from Alucard's nails were just beginning to bleed. There he is, the one who chained her over a sigil that would eat away at her magic, who sang to her and used Speaker tricks to burn his horrors into her mind. There he is, the man whose bone saw took others of her people before her, who hunted them and saw them not even as animals, not even as prey, but as ingredients for his next machination, and nothing more.

There he is, tied and fallen and beaten, subjected to the same awful fate he'd been peddling to unsuspecting others before him.

She stays close to Alucard, hands on him, unwilling and unable to let him go. It's better if Trevor has all the room he needs to work, in this smoke. It's going to stupor Alucard, breathing it, and no matter what else might happen, she's got to at least protect him. She's got to.

It startles her, the visceral flood of terror that still crashes over her when she looks at him, even when he's reduced to as pitiful a state as this.]

No...

[Her fingers tighten on Alucard, less holding and more clutching now.]

His...his magic...

[There is a tiny part of Alucard, the part of him that is well and truly the son of Dracula, that takes some level of delight in seeing the necromancer like this. He is not humbled, he is brought down low into the mud and his face has been rubbed into it time and again, breaking him of any falsely earned pride. Oh, he could still be a threat, but to witness this, there's a thrill in Alucard that he has such a deep shame of even as the feeling glows warmly in the pit of his stomach.

Focusing on the other two means he can ignore the feeling. Alucard is hyper aware of how Trevor moves. He has to force himself to be through the thick smoke, and it's right to assume that there are other traps present. The spell's caster may be without magic now, but that doesn't mean his spells can't be fueled.

When the necromancer tries to reach out, Alucard still tries to move in front of Sypha. It's allowed under the smoke's say so because the urge is not to harm, but to protect. Protect even though that was part of the problem in the first place.

He can still do that. The way Sypha's hands are on him say everything. His hands go over hers, gentle as they can be in this moment.]

Forgemastery isn't extended to vampires. There's no need, given what vampires are capable of.

[He speaks lowly, not willing to move without Trevor's say so.]

Sypha. [He says her name to try and ground her.] What would you have us do, and what would you have Us do?

[The capital letter can be heard. He has to ask, because this is so very much the matter of two different parts of their lives.]

[ The tarlike shadows bubble more frantically as they approach, three-fingered hands flying out to grab at them. He's not vampire enough yet to be as affected by the smoke as even Alucard. Not enough to have entirely lost his powers. But almost. One hand almost reaches Trevor before breaking apart, only to be lanced through by a thin needle of ice. ]

Shit, thanks. [ Trevor murmurs back to Sypha. ] Fucker's still dangerous. We killing him here, or bringing him for execution? Say the word and I'll do either.

[ Except that that ice wasn't Sypha's. Somewhere deeper in the smoke, there's the sound of rustling cloth, so quiet that only Alucard's hearing will be able to pick it up. They aren't alone here. ]

[Alucard's question weighs more heavily than perhaps even he realizes, posed to her the way that it's framed. There's a reason she's not often involved in this aspect of Alucard's business, why her role chases after similar goals but in different directions. Trevor is a Belmont, born and bred to be an executioner of things like these. Speakers are made to heal, to help, to preserve, not to destroy.

But they won't act without her, not this time. And maybe on some level that's for the best, when paradoxically enough she's the one best equipped to be objective, even despite also being the one wounded most directly by what the necromancer had done. Alucard's need for vengeance has its roots in the losses of others he's loved before her, and the outrage that this man had nearly taken her from him, too. And Trevor — Trevor was so badly shaken by what was done that he'd begged her to carry his gun because of it, knowing full well what it meant and what making that choice would mean for her.

And yet deep down, she wishes this didn't fall to her. If she had her way, what she wants, what she would want, really, is —]

I want to have never met him.

[At first blush, it sounds almost like a regret — a little burst of melancholy whimsy, pining for a road not taken.

But she is a Speaker, whatever else she might be. And they've known her long enough that they might just recognize a Speaker's curse when they hear it.]

I want no one to remember him. Every bit of him, forgotten. Forever.

[Those words ache to hear. Alucard's fury has always been reserved for the man and what he did to Sypha, well beyond the physical hurt. It's the way she reacts that pains him most, because nothing should ever break her as this thing has done.

Alucard's understanding of the world of Speakers has only ever been through the lens of Sypha. But oh, he understands what her words mean. He can make them happen.]

That can be done.

[It is in his power to make that happen among the vampires. But right now there's something else. Something moving.

Alucard's sword can't come out, he's still too affected by the smoke. But he lets out an alarmed noise, something close to a wolf's snarl, and he immediately faces the direction the noise is coming from.]

Belmont.

[There's so much alarm in a single word.]

[ There are parts that don't sell. Tongues, eyes, brains, hair, fingernails, hands, teeth - those are worth more than their weight in gold. But then there are the torsos and legs. The organ meat. The upper arms, in most cases. They sell, still. Flesh laced with magic always sells. But prices are cheaper, and good help, good help that still has magic in its bones, can be harder to come by than coin.

Hard to come by. Harder still to keep without his powers.

Another hand launches out, this one at Sypha. Magic. He needs magic. Human magic. Something that can take control of his twisting, roiling powers and use them to defend him. If he can get one of those hands into her, use her as a puppet...

Another icy dart flies into the hand. The sound of rustling cloth is clearer now, audible even to human ears. And then, then they are close enough to see.

There are three of them. Each carries - or 'carries', none have complete hands - a censer, filling the room with that blinding smoke. The first is the easiest to make out the details of. The lower jaw is gone, and the teeth torn out of the gums of the upper one. The eye sockets are hollow, the head shaven with very little care for the risk of catching chunks of flesh in the blade. It has one arm to the wrist, ending in a stump, and one to the forearm, and then two more limbs sprouting from its hips. They're legs, technically, and the colours of the skin match neither each other nor the skin of the speaker attached to them.

And it is a speaker. An amalgam of flesh in long, blue robes stained with old blood, with holes torn into them to make space for the extra limbs. Its companions, perhaps thankfully, are still too obscured by the smoke to see in their entirity. One looks to possess three of those jawless heads and one arm ending in a palm with no fingers. Another is short, its torso horizontal to the ground and suspended between four pairs of legs like a spider.

A sound comes from the first one, a horrible moist rasping noise, as it addresses Sypha, pushing past both her and Adrian to move between her and the dying necromancer. ]

[It's a very specific blue, the color of Speaker robes. Alucard knows it, too, all too well — it'd taken him a long time to find a bolt of cloth that exactly matched that shade, once. It's Speaker blue, the tattered cloth wound around the horror that lurches toward them through the fog. They're Speakers, or at least mostly Speakers, or at least creatures with the parts of Speakers grafted on.

That's not the realization that makes her start screaming.

She starts screaming when it occurs to her how close she came to being one of them, herself.]

[There's too much to process at once. The Speakers, such as they once were and are even now, represent too many lives lost to this necromancer. They're the apex of his work, a horrible conglomeration of everything he sold and everything he kept. They move horribly, and it is a blessing that the incense fills so much of the air, obscuring finer features.

Even like this, they are Speakers. There is violence a foot, and they have moved to protest it in a way only a Speaker could. The necromance deserves harm brought upon his head. He can no longer live. He ought to have died at their hands three times over, and they've failed every time. Maybe Carmilla should have dispatched him instead, politics be damned. Yet it's politics that have spared him for now, and it is the Speakers and their code of pacifism that prolongs his life even now. They are between Sypha and the man. A shield, protecting one of their own, but also allowing him to endure for a few more terrible moments.

They have too much to deal with. The necromancer. The speakers. Sypha, because all three of them know the simple fact: had they failed, Sypha would be here too. Alucard's arms wrap around her. Pull her close because that scream is too much to bear, and if the late Speaker who's pushed past him once takes issue with it, then so be it.

There's no words. Can't be words. Everything is drowned in Sypha's screams.]

[ He shouldn't take his eyes from the necromancer. He does anyway, at Sypha's scream, and it's only a blessing that he's quick enough to realise that they're not a danger to her not to lash out at them with his whip.

No, it's not just a blessing. He couldn't strike them if he tried, because even without the way they wear their hair, even with the robes torn and stained and blue instead of white, he knows full well what they are. He couldn't have done a thing to them even had they meant harm. ]

Chimeras. [ He provides, probably not entirely helpfully. It's more than clear what they are, and putting a name to them doesn't change a thing.

The next hand isn't lanced through with ice. Instead, the white smoke gathers together into a hand of its own, pale and softly glowing and outstretched. It catches the shadow, wrapping its fingers around it and holding it. There's no violence in it - Trevor knows the movements it's making. It's the way they would take people's hands to ground them during painful treatment or delivering bad news. But it holds the hand still. The shadow doesn't break apart this time, and so the fragments of it don't return to their master.

The next one, then, is smaller. There is less to work with. And again, it is caught and held, and that hold is soft and comforting, almost, but also uncompromising. They would not forego painful treatment and allow someone to die. They would not keep a man ignorant of terrible news. There's comfort in it, but no escape. It continues, until all of the smoke in the room is gathered into those glowing hands and there are no shadows left to use.

There is just a broken man in the middle of the room. A broken man with the consequences of his actions, and the people he hurt most giving him what comfort they can. Holding his hands, all of his hands, through the pain of whatever comes next. ]

[Eventually, her cries fade away and die in her throat, replaced by a melancholy silence and the spillover of hot tears from her eyes as she watches the creatures — chimeras — work. It hurts to look at them and know what they once were, juxtaposed with what the necromancer had made them into, and never moreso than when they begin to catch and subdue the forgemaster's last desperate efforts to save himself through his shadows, because she recognizes that kindness so acutely, so deeply, moreso than Alucard and even moreso than Trevor.

Because it's the same steady kindness that came naturally to her grandfather's hands, the same to the elders of her caravan who took the place of her parents as she grew. She knows those stalwart hands from how they'd clasped onto her little fingers as they led her through smoky cities filled with people who shunned them; she knows that steady dignity from the set of shoulders that bore up even under the danger and threats of the little towns filled with suspicion and homegrown justice.

She doesn't know these Speakers, doesn't know their names, but Speakers have never prized individuality over identity, and so deep down she does know them.

How could she not, when they are her?

Her knees wobble, and she leans heavily against Alucard, slipping almost to the point of falling, if he weren't there to hold her up. Her tears come fiercely now, streaming down her face even as she stays silent, watching the ones wronged most by the necromancer still offer the small sliver of mercy that she herself can't find in herself to give.

But of course, she's never been a very good Speaker, has she.]

[Alucard's eyes have been going from the necromancer to Sypha and back since this horrible encounter began. Watching the other speakers emerge has been hard enough. Horrifying with the knowledge that their fate might have been Sypha's, once upon a not very long ago. And yet the hardest part to witness is not Sypha's screams transmuting into silent tears, but the other Speakers.

They are still full of kindness. Mercy. Their ways unchanged even as chimeras, because they are still fundamentaly themselves. Alucard knows in that horrible way, in the deep pit of his stomach, that he does not have it in him to be the same person.

Yet in this horrible situation, there is an even worse question. These chimeras. What is to become of them? This existence cannot be an easy one, and yet to even think the words death is a mercy is wrong. They're innocents, far more than the three of them may ever be. For that reason, killing them is...

...they've been in such horrible situations before, but oh this, this is beyond anything else.

Alucard finds words. Somehow.]

He goes to the House of Justice for now. Until...until decisions are made.

Sir.

[ That's. An odd way to say 'yes'. The presence of speakers always messes with his head like that. Vampire Killer is put aside in favour of Vampire Inconveniencer, and he sets about replacing Carmilla's bindings with it, tying the necromancer to immobilise him. As he does, the glowing smoke hands pull. Not violently, but insistently, leading the last of his magic out of him. One by one, the shadow hands are pulled clean away from him, fading away, and the necromancer is left with nothing.

Trevor pushes the man's head forward, letting the tonic spill out from his mouth so he can breathe before gagging him with the Inconveniencer and tying it again. Which just leaves one more thing. He approaches the speakers, holding out his hands. ]

Right for 'yes', left for 'no'. Will you speak with us?

[ The first speaker's arm, the one that is present up until the wrist, rises and comes down against Trevor's right hand. ]

Trevor...

[She says it softly, because it's hard to watch the way he treats the once-Speakers with such tenderness, such care despite what they've been twisted into. It unsettles her, somehow, for reasons she couldn't begin to pick apart here and in a place like this, and it takes her a minute to realize that her inherent rejection isn't on the part of the former Speakers themselves, but from a compulsion inside her that wants to reject the whole of this as wrong to begin with. She's dealing with it badly because it never should have happened in the first place; she wants it to have not happened, for none of this to ever have happened to these people of her culture and her kin. She doesn't want to have to know how to deal with this. It shouldn't be something that needs be dealt with at all.

But Trevor knows. Trevor, with his outstretched hands. Trevor, who knows Speakers without being one; Trevor, who already has a complicated relationship with Speakers as it is, so perhaps even this isn't all that much moreso.

It aches to watch. But she has to watch, because this is a story, too, and that of these Speakers should be remembered, no matter how much it hurts to take it in and carry it inside her. So she leans on Alucard more heavily, drawing on his support the way she's extended it through his own traumas in the past, and holds on to him with shaking hands.]

They still — they can still understand...

[Which means that the people they once were are still somewhere in there — trapped in prisons more grotesque and horrible than an ankle manacle and a magic-leeching sigil. It's awful to contemplate. She has to contemplate it anyway.]

[Trevor's new way of saying yes is something Alucard never wants to hear again, but it is the least of everything happening in this wretched moment. Alucard stands there as still as the grave, shouldering all of Sypha's weight as she presses against him. As she has been a safe harbor for a year and a quarter now, through grief and madness and everything else, it is the easiest thing in the world to return all of those gestures. His hands rest on her one shoulder, and he is ready to move in front of her should anything, anything happen.

His eyes remain on the necromancer though. One of them just keep watching him, should the condemned try any last desperate attempt to free himself from death's door. The Speakers, the lasting proof of the horrors he's worked, it almost feels inappropriate for Alucard to witness. They are Sypha's people, thus he cannot feel anything but affection for them, just as they represent a truly complicated part of Trevor's life. It's that second part that makes him want to turn, as Alucard's own intimacy with the group is nothing in comparison.

He listens. Lifts his eyes from the necromancer every so often. But he doesn't dare do more than that, because he cannot rightfully interfere. The emotions at stake, Sypha's and Trevor's take the priority.

To Sypha's words, he only murmurs:]

Then they can tell us what their wishes are.

[It is the only mercy here. That what happens next can be according to their will.]

[ This is how the speakers talked to people who were beyond words, back in Europe. They were better at it, at knowing what questions to ask to let someone give the right answers. It's the wrong way around, now, and he just has to fumble his way through it. ]

Are you in pain?

[ Arn asked that of people, and it always seemed a stupid question. Of course it fucking hurt. Everything hurt. He'd always said something about having to ask it anyway, because people needed to understand that not being in pain was still a possibility.

It still feels like a stupid question, especially as the first speaker's wrist settles against his hand. His right hand. He swallows and nods. ]

Is there anything that can relive it?

[ That's a question that Arn never asked, because he always fucking knew what could be done. Trevor doesn't. Nor, it seems, do the chimeras. The first speaker's wrist falls into his left palm. ]

Do you want-

[ His face scrunches halfway through that question, as pained as if the words were needles in his throat. 'Do you want to die'. It's an easy question. It's a solution. It shouldn't be difficult. But he doesn't need to finish the sentence, because the speaker's wrist remains in his left palm. He has his answer. No.

As if to elaborate, the first speaker makes another of those moist, rasping noises. And it takes Trevor a while to understand, because he's already consumed by trying to come up with something other than euthanasia that might help at all. And then it clicks.

They're trying to speak. ]

You have stories left, don't you? To tell before-

[ He can't finish that, either. In understanding, the first Speaker cuts him off with a wrist in his right hand. Yes. Stories to pass on. They can't die while they still have stories that will die with them. ]

He took even that from them.

[It's like the horror never ends, as each new revelation drags them deeper and deeper into the understanding of just what a vile thing was done. Speakers save their stories and protect them, carrying them inside them like secrets, where they'll be safe. She knows that all too well, herself; it was the same reason her own caravan had come to New Orleans at all.

(She'd told it to Trevor, hadn't she? They'd had to come to New Orleans because the memory of Lisa Ţepeş had to survive. That preserving that story even justified a break from their other traditions to serve and assist, because it was too young, too precious, and couldn't be allowed to die with them.)

What stories must these Speakers know? Perhaps they're as important as the story of Lisa Ţepeş, but perhaps they're not. They don't have to be, because what matters is that they're precious to someone.

That much is enough. That much is more than enough to spur on these chimera to try to live on, even after everything else was taken from them. The choice to die isn't their own, not when there are still stories trapped within them. They have the right to snuff out their own lives; they don't have the right to take those stories with them.]

There...there must be a way. Something that can let them speak. Something that will let them discharge their duty, and rest...

[She looks toward Alucard, expression crumpling like paper kissed at the edge by a flame.]

In the castle...could there be something? Anything...?

[Alucard's mind reels through the possibilities of how to tell stories with no sound. He cannot say the obvious: write them down. It is against everything speakers stand for, and he cannot say with any certainty that the tribe these speakers came from might even know how to do it. He's so quiet, quiet as his grip on Sypha tightens, quiet as he struggles to find suggestions.]

Morse? Some other kind of code that relies on hand gestures?

[They're the first things that spring to mind. They might not know such a thing, even if Trevor is likely to. He's shaking, absently, trying to find the correct solution in all of this horror.]

I. I think I remember something, but I don't know how far my father ever got in developing it. It involved finding another way for vibrations to leave the throat, and they were amplified by a sound system so that words could be understood. I remember it required a surgery though, and that's...

[It's too cruel. It demands too much.]

Morse could work, semaphore, but- passing a story on one letter at a time, without the listener writing it down-

[ Sypha might be able to, but neither of them could. It would be asking a lot even from her. It's difficult. There are solutions, but all of them involve doing this one letter at a time. For a whole story, that just doesn't seem practical. ]

But- that bullshit you just said- [ He understood 'sound system', and that's it. But it's enough to think on. ] -Sypha, does a recording count as writing something down?

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