[Spring comes. The forest thrives, and Alucard takes what little he needs from it in order to simply survive. Even cooking feels like a chore rather than a way to channel any energy he has into something constructive rather than destructive. The kitchen's use decreases. He comes downstairs less. Fetches water from the stream every other day instead.
Sometimes others wander into the forest. He's set traps (humane ones, mostly) both physical and magical in nature. They're effective deterrents, and they give Alucard the loneliness that is so clearly his lot in life now. No one makes it to the castle. No one sees the impaled bodies save him, and eventually, they blur into the background in their various phases of decay.
The warmth of summer encourages the scavengers to finish picking them clean. Soon enough they'll be bone and fall off their places, and then their bones can be scattered. That feels right. Not good, just right.
Alucard knows when Trevor and Sypha enter the woods. He has enough alarms in place now and--
--and everything in him drops. They're going to see. Of course they're going to see. They'd have come back eventually to this, it was only ever a matter of when and how furious they'd be with the display they found.
He should have prepared for what to do when they did come home. If he'd try and scare them away, fight if they demanded it, or something else. But as they draw closer, he settles in the far easiest of all the options: avoidance. The castle is large and they could take days to find him. Maybe they'll assume he left.
That'd be ideal.
So before they even get to the door, he moves. There is an innermost sanctum here, and that is where Dracula's coffin is. Below the engine room. Unused for the twenty years Lisa of Lupu resided in the castle, demanding he also sleep as a man (and then things happened Alucard just didn't think about, thank you.)
That's where he is when Sypha destroys the front door. He closes the lid and--
--yes. This feels right.
They can walk for as long as they like. Yell. They'll have to exert real effort now.]
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Sometimes others wander into the forest. He's set traps (humane ones, mostly) both physical and magical in nature. They're effective deterrents, and they give Alucard the loneliness that is so clearly his lot in life now. No one makes it to the castle. No one sees the impaled bodies save him, and eventually, they blur into the background in their various phases of decay.
The warmth of summer encourages the scavengers to finish picking them clean. Soon enough they'll be bone and fall off their places, and then their bones can be scattered. That feels right. Not good, just right.
Alucard knows when Trevor and Sypha enter the woods. He has enough alarms in place now and--
--and everything in him drops. They're going to see. Of course they're going to see. They'd have come back eventually to this, it was only ever a matter of when and how furious they'd be with the display they found.
He should have prepared for what to do when they did come home. If he'd try and scare them away, fight if they demanded it, or something else. But as they draw closer, he settles in the far easiest of all the options: avoidance. The castle is large and they could take days to find him. Maybe they'll assume he left.
That'd be ideal.
So before they even get to the door, he moves. There is an innermost sanctum here, and that is where Dracula's coffin is. Below the engine room. Unused for the twenty years Lisa of Lupu resided in the castle, demanding he also sleep as a man (and then things happened Alucard just didn't think about, thank you.)
That's where he is when Sypha destroys the front door. He closes the lid and--
--yes. This feels right.
They can walk for as long as they like. Yell. They'll have to exert real effort now.]