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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[ This is not what victory looks like. Not even to Trevor. But as he swallows back the bile, pushes himself to fall into old, easy behaviours-

(The Speaker’s corpse is at his feet. In three weeks time, the man who shot them as a spy will die from the disease that they came here to treat. The corpse will still he there then, flesh rotting off into the shin-deep water of the trench. There’ll be no opportunity to bury them for weeks yet, and none with the inclination to try.

He doesn’t know if they were a boy or a girl.

He follows orders. He keeps fighting. Aside from its silent company, the corpse that was a Speaker changes nothing.)

They can still save her. He can still find her. They have drops of blood and thirty silver coins. And perhaps, if not victory, that is what hope looks like sometimes. ]

Claws. Don’t retract them. [ His voice is steady as he takes the first aid kit from his bag of useful things and weapons and Belmont bullshit. A cotton ball. Saltwater to lift the blood from the floor and from Alucard’s claws. ]

[Alucard has not been rational since it happened. He is very much aware of the fact that he swings between either rage or a deep and horrible sadness that overwhelms him. When the worst of either extreme hits he excuses himself to the castle's basement and stays there until he gets either emotion out of his system. The room has claw marks on the wall, shattered furniture, and Alucard's own blood from him digging claws into palms too tightly.

When he emerges he can work. At the very least he can listen to Trevor and nod and then they go out to do more horrible leg work, running into another dead end. (Tonight it involves a dead Speaker and Alucard is so very mortified for it. He wants to lt her people know, ask what the proper rites are, do something, anything.)

He has said no word to the rest of the vampires he must lord over about this. It would unmake him in their eyes, for what is he now if not his father but even worse? A regent who can't even deal with a necromancer who takes one of his things.

All he can do right now is be directed. It is easier to trust Trevor to do the thinking, be the Belmont's monster. (Belmonster? No, that's silly.) So when Trevor says to keep his claws out, Alucard does so. Holds them flat against his own thighs, trying to stop them from shaking.

He fails. But Trevor is back, so he holds one hand out.]

Will it give us anything new?

[ He’s amassing a small, horrible collection of things that he has scraped from Alucard’s skin. Sypha’s blood, carefully wiped from him with cotton and saltwater the way he is doing now, now suspended in a beaker of pure water, diluted but still effective. A layer of skin, peeled away from his chest with one of his mother’s scalpels, saturated in the remains of that shadow magic. A dark ichor from the construct, wiped from his sword after he finally finished slicing the thing limb from limb. ]

There’s blood on the skin. [ The skin. As if it is just a thing that exists and not something that he cut away from Alucard while his claws peirced clean though the wood of the table, not in pain but in terror. ] A clean sample will help me to determine what is you and what is his magic.

And will that help us find ways to combat that magic?

[The question is quiet. Intense. Gold eyes staring up at Trevor with too much fear and desperation in them, hating that this is what they are adding to the collection instead of just having solved the problem already.

He doesn't know how Trevor is managing any kind of calm here. Training, he imagines, and in that moment there is a deep envy for it. He'd do anything for the illusion of rational approaches to the whole matter right now.]

Combat it and track where it’s last been used. Right now I’m having trouble tracking anything but you from it.

[ He wipes away the last of the blood and then his hand is no longer upon Alucard’s. Trevor is a lot of things right now. Comfort is not one of them. ]

Tracking her isn’t working. Something is- taking the magic away from me. I’m guessing some trick to keep her from using hers. I’ll be tracking the magic he used, instead, to see it it leads to the same place as the coins, make sure it isn’t a fluke.

And where I am is obvious.

[There's nothing in Alucard that could even respond to comfort if it was offered. It is better like this, Trevor's workhorse mode and Alucard's rage to be directed as needed. He doesn't retract the claws on the other hand though, just in case Trevor needs more.

He hisses out his next breath.]

He knows we're trying to find her, so he's covering the obvious routes to that.

Likely.

[ He allows himself to sigh. That’s the closest thing to emotion that he’s going to be having for the next week. He’s been sighing a lot. ]

He’s hiding her, but he’s not hiding himself. Maybe he slipped up, maybe he didn’t know I could do this, maybe it’s a big fucking trap. Odds are even either way.

Trap. I'll bet it's a trap, because he won't discount the use of other magic users to try and find them if I pay them enough to not breathe a word about what the situation is.

[Alucard finally does retract his claws, and then his arms are crossed over his chest.]

It's probably safer to work under the assumption of trap as well. I know it will...[keep his rage checked.] curb my impulses.

Will it?

[ There’s a hint of accusation to that question. Because he saw how Alucard changed when Sypha was threatenned. Saw how he became more vampire than human. He doesn’t- doesn’t want to think of himself as not trusting Alucard.

But he is Alucard now, not Adrian. And it’s hard to imagine him ever being Adrian again right now. ]

Yes. [Alucard can accept the accusation. He has been unsure of his own self control in the worst moments, knowing full well that his behavior edged too close to what Belmonts are trained to take out. His crossed arms become tighter, nearly hugging himself to bring more control into his head.]

Because it threatens our success. I cannot allow that, especially if I am the threat.

Mm.

[ He can’t feel. He won’t let himself. But if he could, he’d be wishing that he were more convinced by that.

It’s a day later, now, and he’s not slept. He hasn’t allowed himself to look through Dracula’s magical research, not since he came here. It feels wrong, it’s what his sister would call bad shit. And also at least some of these books are bound in the skin of people related to him. It’s the only reason he’s able to open half of them. So that’s upsetting.

He needs to identify the substance that he wiped from the sword, see what it can do compared to blood, and- ]

...Alucard. You’ll be doing this alone.

[Alucard had managed three hours of sleep. It was a record, and he had done it curled up in a broken chair on the floor in the tantrum room, not anyplace actually comfortable. He had wandered to the kitchen for blood after that, exhausted and knowing he needed something in his system.

Then it was time to find Trevor again, and it had become sitting and quietly going through his father's research. Alucard's sitting beside Trevor, his nose buried in one of the books when Trevor speaks.

Alucard freezes. His voice is so very small.]

...What?

Edited 2019-02-04 01:37 (UTC)

...the incense. You recall it? From before.

[ He sighs. He would hate this so, so much, if he could only feel anything. As it is, his tone is perfectly even. ]

That’s Belmont shit. Unless someone else created the same thing without Dracula taking notice.

Yes. It dulled my senses, made me want to...[He gestures with his hand, searching for words.] Docile. It made me docile.

[He hadn't had the time to really digest that fact before. But now...oh. Oh fuck.]

My sources were wrong. Or worse, lied to.

Which means the other books could be out there, and we know that he has a source for at least one.

[ It’s possible that their nevromancer doesn’t know. There was a whole lot of Belmont bloodup for grabs when they fought the tiger, after all. But maybe he does, and that maybe is just enough. ]

We wouldn’t need to fail to lose, if I were there. We’d be lost the second I suffered so much as a paper cut. With my blood, he may be able to control the castle.

Later. When...[when this is over. When this is over and Sypha is back, because if this ends without her then so does the vampire, so does the city's stability, so does everything.] when we have the time, we need to make a rough catalog of what I need to begin to look for on the markets.

[A Tepes, collecting all the remains of House Belmont. It's terrible, isn't it?

As Trevor explained, Alucard's face goes white. He understands. He understands and there's a low murmured oh god before silence falls over him.]

I understand.

[ He should apologise. He’ll be sending Alucard in alone. Alucard, who isn’t trained for this the way he is. Hardened by only a single year of tragedy and not by a lifetime of training and preparation for this. Coddled by himself and the speaker. Alucard, soft and suffering and already broken into something more monster than human now.

He doesn’t care. ]

I’ll support from the outside as best I can. Can I trust that you generally make a point of not touching the blade of your sword?

Belmont, all of the magic....

[He knows he can't counter all the magic of a mage's workshop. There's not defeat in his voice, not exactly, but the concern is impossible to ignore. He isn't scared, not yet, but he wavers.]

But yes, you can assume that freely.

I’m going to do Belmont Shit to the blade of your sword. As long as you don’t touch the blade itself, the demon hide gloves should be enough to keep it from harming you. That should- help, at least.

Everything else-

[ He breathes in and out through his teeth. ]

I’ll find a way. Your father must have had a way.

I intended to have it hovering the entire time. It will help with the issue of range, since if there is to be a return of the house's owner, we will need to keep space between us maximized.

[He cannot be a snarling monster, as much as he wishes to. As much as there would be satisfaction in sinking claws into heart and just pulling it out.

(Alucard knows he is capable of that action now.)

(Alucard knows this is the only time he'd ever do it so happily.)

A way, Trevor says, and Alucard closes his eyes to try and think.]

What kind of magic would it fall under? His library is organized by topic.

Channeling, perhaps. Or- I could study that puppet. It managed to cast spells remotely. We’re not low on options, only on time.

[ Only on time. Only. ]

Three days. Give me three days. If we don’t have a solution by then, we discuss desperate measures.

I can find the correct section.

[Alucard can't know what he's really looking for. Just where it ought to be, and then Trevor says time. He hisses at the word, furious at the concept rather than at Trevor for the reminder.]

And I will help. The research cannot be your work alone, not right now.

Anything that you can find, to do with channeling magic from a person or an object. After that-

[ After that comes desperate measures. ]

Anything you can find on speeding the turning process.

I'll stray into familiars, the concept might at least provide inroads to some solution and--

[He stops. The only thing that moves are Alucard's eyes, their gold glinting and not in a way that they ever should. They're keen. Wary.]

No.

I can just get the books myself, you realise.

[ Not that getting the books is what Alucard was objecting to, but- ]

It’ll render my blood useless. It’ll ensure success. It’ll mean I don’t fuck up like that again. It has to be an option.

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