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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[Alucard can't tell how many days it has been. (A week. It has been a week.) Everything has blurred together, horrible and exhausting and terrifying. He remembers the last time he felt this way, the overwhelming horror and grief and fury, and it is the worst thing he could think of in this moment. Alucard doesn't dare give voice to what this is close to, and he is certain that Trevor's own feelings are thinking of all the Belmonts now lost due to a horrible fucking bomb. They're without her, and for it everything is going to be tossed to the wind.

His appearance is not required at any function. Alucard pretends office hours are for vampire work, but it is for finding Sypha. For sitting with Trevor and watching him do battle with the myriad of enchantments the necromancer has laid out to cover his trail. He is, after all, good at magic. Good at hiding where he is, misdirecting the two. Even using Sypha's blood (recovered from Alucard's claws, he had sat and tried not to scream as Trevor took cotton and cleaned out whatever he could from underneath all of them. The bigger the sample, the better. Alucard understood the logic but he still hated everything.

Sleeping at the townhouse wasn't an option. Everything they needed was at the castle, but the idea of sleeping in their bed without her was unforgivable. Alucard had found a spare room instead with a passable mattress, and when either one of them was exhausted, they would crash there.

Not that sleep came easy. After two or three hours Alucard would snap awake from a fresh nightmare, thrashing and flying up to one of their tracking devices to pray that there was a new lead. When there was, it would be followed, but only to be misdirected.

In that misdirection, they understood the necromancer better. All of the shadows and misdirection, it was a source of power. So they began to think about the city in a new way, where there was the least amount of sun, where shadows were heaviest, and in so doing, the city provided the right answer. The oldest part, the most heavily built upon, that was the likely spot for the necromancer's place of power.

(They would be going into it, but not blindly. Flares, lamps, anything to force brightness.)

Dracula's own library helped. Counter spells that Trevor could manage and easier ones for Alucard. He was the least skilled of the three with magic, but he could understand what must be done. There was one such spell applied to his sword, something to make it glow. It would, in theory, allow an easier time of beating back the shadows.

Then there had been the quiet discussion of what the priority had to be. Sypha. Not destroying the necromancer, if push came to shove, but Sypha. The man had to die, he had to, and as painful as the idea of putting it off was, the thought of letting her die first was unacceptable.

So it was that after a week of horrible heartsickness, of planning, of terror, of every desperate emotion, that the plan began. The first step was to ensure the real McCoy was out of his lair. It was done. Some business had happened, and that meant that Alucard and Trevor could approach the house he used. Trevor was working remotely, an idea that terrified Alucard but was required. If something happened to the vampire, one of them could still act. Doing otherwise? The city's power structure actually would collapse.

Alucard's approach is hidden. Cloaked not in shadow but in a glaring brightness in the middle of the day.]

Edited 2019-02-02 23:08 (UTC)

[Sometimes the necromancer leaves her alone. She's certain that there are all manner of trigger and trap spells woven around this room, even if she could facilitate an escape with the manacle around her ankle that's keeping her tethered over the sigil, so she doesn't bother with notions of working herself free somehow and trying to run. No, the strength of the Speakers is always in numbers, and it's the same for the three of them. The instant she starts thinking she's alone, she's done for, and so she makes sure never to forget.

Her captivity leaves her plenty of time to think, and as she does, she tries to predict what Trevor and Alucard will be doing. One is considerably easier than the other; Alucard will be fretting himself sick, and she can't hardly blame him. It's far, far too close to what had happened to his mother, and in the very morgue where she'd been seen to, besides.

But Trevor — Trevor has his map, his runes. They'd talked about it before, how to find people. How to track the Speakers, how to track the spread of a story. Trevor, she thinks, will be trying to find her. The magic-swallowing sigil will make it difficult, but —

...But it's wood carved into a floor. Just floorboards, deep down. And maybe she can't do much, but...

The links of the chain holding her are made of steel. Certainly more durable than wood. Not nearly enough of an edge to be ideal, but better than nothing.

And so, in the time she has to spare when she's alone, she shifts and finds a segment of the circle that's easy to hide from view, and sets the rounded edge of the chain to it and starts to rub. If she can cut a groove in it, even the smallest groove, then maybe it'll upset the circle's function just enough for something, anything, to get through.]

[Moving through the city streets reeking of magic is a new experience. Alucard's unsure how he feels about it, every inch of his skin feeling electrified this way. It had been an experiment, one neither was sure that would work, but it had. With it had come a half attempt at a joke about anything at all, and it had fallen flat. It was just one more step to finding her, and either saving her or knowing that their failure would seal whatever fate the necromancer had in store.

Narrowing down what part of the city she was in had been easiest. Specifics, neither of them knew the exact place. They could guess at defenses and prepare best they could, and there was something worse for it: if it was to be the vampire alone, then the matter of magic was a problem. If it was to be the Belmont alone, then there could be other complications.

It was in going through more of Dracula's library that a solution had presented itself, buried in a book about remote spell casting. Using another body to cast spells, it had said, one positioned as the familiar to the other. An ideal solution, save for the demand: blood of the caster in the veins or body of the other. Because of fucking course it did, it was Dracula's library after all.

The concept was tested after a tense moment of consideration and time spent finding a syringe. Alucard was not taking blood right from a vein and hell if it was putting it in his actual blood stream. That was unsafe for a ton of reasons, but mostly because his blood type and Trevor's were not a match. His digestive system it would have to be, and it seemed to work for the spell.

Alucard had taken half of a pint before departing. Cold rage meant he didn't consider things like taste, he only regarded it as requirement. Now, right now, he felt something tug at the back of his mind. That was Trevor, and he spoke to himself.]

As you need.

[So his fingers moved without his own say so. Cast something, something that looked like a compass, and the rest of Alucard followed it. He didn't venture the question how Trevor was sure this was the right way. This relied on blind trust, trust that saw Alucard go through alleys and side streets, until he arrived at the side entrance of an unassuming house indeed.]

[Time, effort, and sheer determination eventually take their toll on the floor. It's not a very deep groove; it wouldn't be much of a spell if idle scratches and wear and tear could disrupt it so easily. But slowly and surely, through aching muscles and too-tense hands, she's managed just barely to cause a break in the circle, just enough. Or at least, she hopes it's enough; she tries to create a ball of flame to test the theory, and it still manages to suck the magic away, but it's slower this time than it was before. It's not instantaneous; there's a span of about two seconds when it stays lit, before eventually it dissipates.

It also leaves her exhausted, somehow, as though sucking it away had drained the magic straight out of her body instead of just from her spell, but that's a problem for another time. For now, she drops to the ground to rest, aching and tired, and waits.

She waits so long that she's genuinely almost convinced that there's nothing. That she was wrong in her hunch, that they're trying something different when it comes to locating her.

But then she senses just the barest taste of a familiar magic that isn't her own, so thin it almost isn't there, and the instant she does her eyes go wide and she grasps for it, yanking so hard that the weakened, fragile spell seems to snap before being devoured by the circle.

And yet, there was a pull. Maybe, just maybe, that's enough.]

[They agreed that this thing, it can't be done again. No one can know about it, because all trust in Alucard as regent would be lost. A puppet of a Belmont in all the ways that matter to vampire society, and Alucard couldn't blame them. This is for emergencies, and what is this if not one of the worst emergencies that could befall any of them?

Alucard doesn't put his hand to the door. He relies on Trevor for it, because the door is probably warded to the gills and....

...it is not. The plain green door has nothing on it at all, and when Alucard opens it, what greets him is a landing with stairs that go up and down. He's the one that closes the door behind him though, as to not be detected, and then it's standing there while Trevor reads the situation and where the stronger magic is. Down and so down it must be.

This is where fear kicks in. Fear of what is bound to be guarding the steps, fear of what they might find down there. Alucard's feet go carefully, and he's in control of that. Right now Trevor is only looking through his eyes, and the speed Alucard is moving at suits. It allows for observation, for catching traps, and Alucard whispers:]

What if they aren't triggered until you move up again?

[One thing that's immediately apparent is the fact that the house has a noticeable aroma to it — that same clinging smell of smoke and patchouli, heavy in the air and more distinctive from the area up the stairs than the ones that go below. The stairs down are made of wood, and each one creaks very faintly — audible to Alucard's ears, but perhaps not a human's.

Particularly curious are the walls, which are painted a dark brown shade, yet have an odd, swirling sort of discoloration to them in whorls and curves.

By now, Alucard is about halfway down the stairs; there's still half a flight to go, but a few things around to look at if he chooses to.]

[The patchouli is too strong. Fucks with Alucard's sense of smell, and it's a blessing that the smell is not concentrated in the basement. He's still going slow, still not daring to rush ahead to rescue Sypha because there are too many other factors at play.

(Oh, he wants to though. To throw all caution to the wind, pretend that there are no other people in the world that rely upon him, and tell every consequence to go to Hell. It's a terrible and overly romantic idea that he will confess only when she is well.)

Trevor asks him to turn, just for a moment. A hunch about how escaping might go, and Alucard obliges. Trevor's seeing the swirls in the walls just as he is, and it may be giving the Belmont an idea that Alucard has missed.]

Where else do you need me to focus?

[Intriguingly enough, closer inspection reveals that the walls themselves are painted a uniform dark brown; it's not the wall itself that's a deeper color, but something clinging to it. As a matter of fact, the swirls and whorls bear an unsettling resemblance to the tentacles of shadow that they'd dealt with in the morgue a week ago, following the same shapes and designs.

So, then: one of what are probably many of this basement's defenses. Shadows that cling to the walls, camouflaged against paint chosen deliberately to be dark and obfuscating. They don't seem to have a problem with Alucard's descent; a retreat, however, may well be another story.

There's also a hint of magic down by Alucard's feet, radiating off the steps. Closer inspection, particularly with the help of light, will indicate that each step has a small marking carved into it, down near the base and in the corner where it's easily missed.]

[As expected. Going down is easy. Returning is hard. Alucard vaguely wonders what old story Sypha would relate to (Orpheus is perhaps the obvious one), but that requires a certain level of dumbassery. They are being so careful right now, documenting each and every problem.

Shadows. Shadows everywhere, and no chance to experiment with how light reacts to them, because they can't let the necromancer know that they are here. Alucard crouches down so that Trevor can look at the markings in the steps (the light he is cloaked in assists with illumination), and it is something that they keep at until they are at the bottom of the steps.

Alucard breathes out. He can feel himself shaking, hand now on his sword, his coat pulled tight in his other hand. Whatever lies ahead, whichever cursed door he finds that leads them both to Sypha, he will fall apart utterly. There is no question in his mind about that fact.

The only unknown is what has actually been done. Oh, his mind has been brilliant at finding a million potential answers, each more terrible than the last, but none of them are correct. So he moves forward, forward until Trevor tells him they're at the right door, but wait.

They can't trust the door, after all.]

[The door, it turns out, is also trapped; evidently when one does something in this town, one is really damn thorough about it. This one, however, consists of a magical residue left on the handle — presumably the sort of thing that would cling to an unsuspecting intruder and allow the necromancer to track them backwards after an escape. It's also one easily remedied by simply not touching the door with anything Alucard intends to take with him when he leaves.

Once inside, however, he'll find a workshop empty of necromancers but filled with clutter and magic-laced bits and baubles, and there on the far end of the room lies Sypha, stripped of her Speaker robes and with her bare arms covered in cuts, pinpricks, and bruises, hair a mess and one ankle chained to a ring bolted down to the floor.]

[Alucard pauses and looks around for something to use to deal with the door. Anything that would minimize contact, and Trevor bitches that he could stand to abandon a fucking sock at this rate. That nearly gets into an argument about socks being important, and Alucard decides that this is in fact stupid. He tears off a tiny piece of his own shirt instead, and he'll find some way to destroy the fabric before they leave. He can't let this man find the castle. (A castle that is far better cloaked than anyone could hope for, because only Belmonts can fight Dracula's magic, but still.)

Before he enters, Alucard draws out his sword. It hovers over his shoulder as he walks in, and at this point the spell that he is cloaked in picks up in intensity. There is not a white light around him but a blue glow, the kind of thing that means something is likely burning to hot.

What he finds does, in fact, make Alucard want to scream. There's a thing that has Sypha attached to the floor, there is blood on her arms, there is no evidence of food or water around her, and even as he lunges forward, Trevor is holding him back because look at the thing on the floor.

Alucard does. He understands, he can't cross that thing. He swears softly, like he's arguing with himself (he is.)

But then the argument ends, and he can at least move to the edge of that horrible thing. When he says her name, it is laced with fear. Fear that she's no longer herself, that there's something wearing her skin instead, a million options and none of them good.]

Sypha?

[More than anything else, his voice is so, so small.]

[She rouses, a little, at the sound of her name; there's magic in the air, she can sense it, and slowly she manages to lift her head to look in the direction of the voice. She's been conserving what energy she can, in the moments she's not been trying to saw away at the grooves in the floor, so her movements are sluggish and slow, but soon she's managed to look up in his direction.

It's the blond hair that catches her attention, makes her eyes widen slightly. It's Alucard — he found her, and Trevor isn't near but that doesn't much register yet, not right now.

Yet she, too, is aware of the necromancer's capabilities, and the potential for tricks. So when she speaks, it's in rudimentary Romanian — the best language she knows Alucard knows that an average person in New Orleans probably wouldn't.]

How did we meet?

[The words are slurred, exhausted. But surely it's a question that only Alucard would know the answer to, only her Alucard because he was the only one who was there.]

[That she asks is a relief, and that it's the same question Alucard would have settled on is both a reminder of how in sync they are with each other and how it seems these heartbreaks follow them. He shakes a little, the memory still powerful. He can't be having with that, not right now.

His Romanian is still archaic. Trevor and Trevor's grandmothers still give him shit for it (and refuse to help him modernize. Which is rude!!!)

You snuck away from your caravan, and we spoke at a crossroads. You bid me rest until morning, and you found me with your robes over my chest and leaves in my hair. I cannot imagine what you thought, but I pray it's changed.

[No, he's still a disaster.]

[Oh. Oh, it's him, it's her Alucard, and urgently she struggles to lift her head a little further, squirming to try to get a better look at him.

There's dried blood on her face, left over from the blow she'd taken a week ago. The bruises are still there, as well.]

It eats magic.

[She still sounds dizzy, disoriented, but she's trying.]

I don't know how long ago he left.

[He nods. He nods to show that Sypha is heard, and then both of Alucard's palms rest beside the sigil itself. It's letting Trevor do the work of understanding how, exactly, any of this functions, and then Alucard's hands are moved back slowly. He's powered by magic right now, which means that he cannot risk being consumed by it.

Trevor must work. Alucard's focus must be practical. It aches to see that dried blood on his face, to see her sluggish, to see what feels like a dying fire instead of something burning so bright that he can only bask in the glow.]

Have you been given food and water?

[What it really means is how much strength does she have?]

[She has to think about it a minute. There's been no real way of telling the passage of time since she's been brought down here; no windows and no timepieces have made all the hours run together into one another, punctuated only by when the necromancer was here and when he wasn't. So she has to think about it a minute, casting her memory back amidst the drowsy spells and the times when she wasn't awake.]

Once.

[Food once. Water slightly more often. The necromancer only needs to keep her alive, not necessarily healthy.]

What day is it...?

A week. It's been a week since....

[He trails off. The tug in the connection between himself and Trevor is felt, and it means that all the information they must communicate has to be put on hold. There is, from where Trevor sits, a line from the sigil that connects to elsewhere, and Alucard is made to walk along some invisible line. It leads to a series of jars placed upon a table, the same drawings etched onto the glass. Within the jars are low levels of a deep orange glow (embers of a fire), and the revelation is simultaneous.

The energy gets fed into the jars. Stockpiling. So to break the line between the jars and the circle around Sypha is step one. Alucard's hand hovers over the table, he's happy to smash the whole of it. His claws scratch into the wood around it, but that is not his own doing.

Alucard looks over to Sypha as his hand moves without himself being in control.]

When this is done, we're getting that thing off of you and then will need to ride out the defenses. If you are on my back, can you hang on?

[That gets a slow, tired nod out of her. It's less confidence in her own arm strength and more just that she's ready to do whatever it takes to make their escape from this, regardless of how capable her body is of keeping up with her will.]

What is...

[She frowns, watching the way that he moves, brow furrowed and face slightly pale.]

Why are you moving like that?

When we're home.

[He will explain they're home. It is a statement of purpose, a reminder of why they're here to begin with, and now everything is ready to be put into place. Alucard directs his sword to hover at the circle's edge, and then two things happen at once.

The first thing is that the destruction of the circle's connection to the glass batteries is finally severed, claws scratching the last piece of the counterspell into the wood and then dragging across the invisible tether that forms the connecting line.

Second is the sword. It falls into the circle, aimed squarely for the terrible chain on Sypha. The cut it makes is not clean, but it cleaves through through Alucard's sheer force of will. It is the first time any of his emotion has felt well and truly useful in this situation, and what better way to let it all manifest than this first act of freedom?

[It's a testament to her willpower that the instant she's free, she's moving — fingers digging into the floorboards as best she can, pulling herself along in a desperate attempt to get herself moved off of the sigil in the floor. It hurts to move, of course; everything hurts, at this point, and her vision is still swimming somewhat from the untreated hit to the head she'd incurred a week ago. But Alucard is right — when we're home. Not now. Now is for escaping. There will be time, later.

There's always time, later. There has been, since the day they met.]

Hurry...

[There is no time to waste. That has also been true since they met, the situation no less dire than before. A year ago, it meant Alucard's life. Now it means hers, theirs, and going home to Trevor. A life well lived in, a life to be fought for in order to keep living.

Alucard dives for her swiftly in that moment, makes sure he is low to the ground so she can scramble up onto him. The room has not reacted yet, it is a matter of time, they must do this before anything else.]

[It's hard, to say the least, but she manages to push herself up far enough that she can get her arms around his shoulders, levering herself up the rest of the way until she's draped across his back, linking her arms around each other to better help hold on.

He's so much warmer to lie on than the unforgiving floor. He's soft, and smells of home and magic instead of the thick and cloying aromas of the workshop, and she's quick to bury her face against his neck and breathe him in.]

You have to...

[She's so tired, she's not thinking straight. But this is important and she needs him to know it, needs to collect herself enough that she can tell him.]

There's a letter. I don't know what it says.

[She clings a little harder, more determined.]

He talked about a letter.

[The moment that Sypha is secure against his back is the moment that Alucard's feet leave the ground. His own skills are powers, not magic, and in theory should not be impacted by the horrible things within this room.

It is in lifting off the ground that it registers how light Sypha is. She always has been, she is the smallest of the three, but now that lightness is for all of the wrong and terrible and horrifying reasons and Alucard wants to snarl in anger for that fact alone.

(There will be so many other reasons for that noise in due time, but it is easiest to focus on small things first.)]

Okay.

[He hears her. He begins to drift towards what looks like a desk.]

If it is down here, we will destroy it. If not, then we must abandon it. We're here to rescue you first. Trevor and I are in agreement that to destroy him is not as important in this moment as getting you out of here.

[He manages to say it all with calm and reassurance in his voice. It takes Alucard himself by surprise.]

[She makes a soft noise, halfway between a whimper and a gurgle, and settles back down against his back; her efforts complete for the moment, she's ready to settle back and entrust herself to Alucard for a little while, reassured by the soothing tone of his voice.

She's right about there being a letter; Alucard is right about it being located on or near the desk in question. The roll of tracing paper can be found spread atop the surface, still with the shape of a human body traced on it, with lines drawn through the component limbs at each of the joints, and the head scribbled out.

Near it sits the letter in question, typed on a typewriter to disguise any telltale signs of handwriting, and containing what appears to be a purchase order. A request for two product, with height and weight specifications attached; one M, one F, familial resemblance.

Near the specifications for the M, there's penciled handwriting scribbled in, reading "Ear / Eye"; near the F, "Hand".]

[What it is, in the end, is an order form of sorts, isn't it? Like a butcher's diagram of meat cuts, except human shaped and with specific requests already made of it. Alucard's entire face pales (as if that was already possible), and Trevor's moving his hand without any say so.

The thing is then bathed in light, and then it crumples up into nothing at all before Alucard can make more sense of it. This...it's as cursed an object as the three of them have ever encountered, and made all the worse for what it meant. What might have happened if they didn't interfere.

But it sets off a new panic, and Alucard's voice is low.]

Trevor. [He's looking down at the space where the paper was.] For an escape, might there be invisible lines to make those cuts just in case....

[He thinks of piano wire, pulled tight, slicing through, through, through, and Alucard hates his own mind for thinking of it.]]

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