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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[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.]]

[Doubtful, comes the ultimate verdict, though there is decidedly doubt to it, and not certainty. The logic stands, however; something like that would've had to stick to Sypha directly in order to be effective, and that in turn would mean coming up with a spell that would stick despite the magic-sucking sigil she'd been put on. Not impossible, perhaps, but probably a great deal more effort than return, with plenty of other defenses already in place.

Maximizing efficiency. It's not much hope to hang a hat on, but it's better than nothing.]

Lines...?

[Sypha mumbles, still dangling from his neck.]

[Doubtful is....not great. But they have to take it, and the next step is easy. Breaking every single glass battery that holds Sypha's energy, happy to let that into the air. God willing, it might restore Sypha some, and if not, it will ensure that the necromancer has less of her to work with. So Alucard does so, aware that this could set a fire. So be it. Right now he'll take fire and all the fears that go with it so long as Sypha is free.

He shifts just a little when all the glass is free.]

We know that leaving this place is going to be harder than entering. You'll need to hold on harder in a few moments. Can you do that?

[Fortunately for everyone concerned, perhaps, the magic in jars consists of flame with no fuel; because Sypha's not actively feeding them, they burn out reasonably quickly once they're freed from their stasis in their jars. Most burn out quickly; a few land on the floor and test the wood before leaving scorch marks behind as they die. And for just one, hot glass skitters across the desk and starts to smolder, still carrying enough heat that it might just fan itself back into a flame if left alone long enough.]

M'not letting you go.

[Not when he's her lifeline right now; not when there's still some part of her that knows he needs her too. That's how it's always been, isn't it — even in her worst moments, Sypha will still do everything she can to put her loved ones first.]

Ngh...what can I do...?

[She can help. They'll need her help. She's sure she can help, or so she decides amidst her disorientation.]

[Alucard throws into the still existing flame the scrap of cloth he used to open the door. It catches, and soon it is ash. Then there is a decision he makes is only a second, and it is not to even try and put that flame out. This place, this place ought to burn. Let the necromancer be forced to start anew. Let him demand vengeance, for the three of them will and they shall be all too delighted to dole it out.

The door then. The door. Alucard floats towards it, both feeling Sypha's words as much as he hears them. It is agony for that voice to be as weak as t is. It shouldn't be, it's not her, not really. To see her down to embers was expected, but painful to witness.

He shifts for just a moment, so she can see his face again. It is cold and set and determined, and for a moment there is a flicker of the warmth she has always been capable of dragging out of him.]

Remain alert. Survive.

[One of these things is much easier than the other to accomplish. Survival is fine; it's staying focused that keeps proving more difficult than not, and she whimpers a little as she clings tighter, trying to pull herself up enough to at least see over his shoulder and try to keep her eyes forward.]

Hurry. S'never gone for long.

[Also she just hates it in this place. The reek. The feel of the magic twisted into everything. The way the necromancer talked to her about Speakers.]

We're working on it. There's too much magic on the stairs that will activate on the way up that we can well and truly rush through it.

[He uses we, and he means all three of them. Alucard's hand goes to the door knob, and he flings it open. Now is when the real work begins, because everything else? That has been easy so far. Too easy by far, and Alucard doesn't like that fact.

There's a low hiss as he floats over the threshold, back into the corridor.]

Start already.

[Get it over with.]

[And almost as if on cue, it does.

Much like a lobster trap, the basement is easy enough to get into; it's getting back out again that makes everything difficult. It helps that Alucard's floating instead of putting weight on the steps; the runes there are glowing an eerie green hue, but they don't appear to be activating, just primed and ready.

The shadows on the walls, on the other hand, sense movement, and have begun to lift away from the paint, ink-black like tentacles in an already dark corridor.]

[Floating was the right choice. That is scant comfort, but Alucard is satisfied that he has at least fought off one problem before it could take hold. His eyes flick to the terrible walls though, and he growls out Trevor's name but once.

It is permission. It is handing over the reins of the vampire over to the Belmont entirely, and for that Alucard can only sit inside of himself and watch.

They can't be certain the light that Alucard is bathed in will work, and so the first thing that happens is Alucard's sword is sent out to meet the shadows on the walls. To carve into them a counter spell, praying that the extension of the light spell on Alucard will continue to extend to the sword and keep those terrible shadows at bay. The steel screeches as it cuts through the wood, and that is not a natural sound.]

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