I know. [Guilt drips from her every word, wrings from her fingers as she onehandedly wrangles his hair. There's so much of it.] And I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. [If only she or Trevor had been faster, if only they'd pushed into the room sooner, if only she hadn't been so flinchy with her fire around the other two, if only if only if only.
Is this what Trevor hears in his head, all the time?
When Alucard pulls again, she lets him draw away from the immediate blanketing contact but does not let go of her hold on his shoulder. His hair slips from her fingers and puddles just everywhere, again.] I'm not trying to fix you, Adrian. We can't change what's already been done. But we can help each other live with it, can't we?
You don't. [Part of Alucard can clock the guilt. The rest of Alucard is drowning in his own sorrows, refusing the life preserver that has been tossed to him.] You weren't here.
[It isn't an accusation. It's a statement of tortured fact, because something else has been unlocked.]
If you were I wouldn't have-- [Alucard breathes out, trying to at least get his breathing under control.] They wouldn't have thought their attempt on my life could be accomplished through affection, they wouldn't be on the lawn--
[There. He's managed that much. It's his confession of what happened in their absence.]
I wasn't..? [Sypha's whole face crumples in concern. Has his memory of events slipped, somehow? If so, was it the isolation? Or the strange injuries? Or--
Her rapidly chaining thoughts shatter into separate, disconnected links, when he starts talking about a 'they'. An attempt on his life. Something he's done. Something she was not here for. She doesn't, can't, know where this conversation has gone, but she can make a leap and hope she lands on answers.]
Alucard. Adrian, please. What attempt? Who hurt you? [She's straightened up, hands slipping away only to reconnect by settling over his. The tips of her fingers stretch to the red mark at the very edge of his shirtcuff.] I don't understand. I can't fix it, but you don't need to be alone with this either.
[He nearly snaps when Sypha's hands ghost over the new collection of scars he's gathered since the two have been away. As it is, he jerks his hands away so that Sypha is no longer touching them. Tries to hide the flesh in his shirt sleeves, almost child like.]
The two things on the front lawn.
[Alucard has vowed to never utter their names.]
Rather than try and kill me outright as Trevor did upon our first meeting they waited and bedded me before attacking.
[His tone is so terribly hollow when it finally gets said out loud. As is the clarification:]
They what? [It's a rhetorical question, breathed in a horrified whisper. Her hands hover over empty space, frozen with the rest of her posture.
Ice spreads from her fingertips, licking across the tabletop in a shameful lack of control. It licks the spines of the books and limns the beetle-chewed edges of their pages. A glass inkwell shatters at the abrupt temperature change, pelting her hip and forearm with black shards.
The ice retracts to nothing with Sypha's next sharp intake of breath. She breathes it out in a dense cloud of fog and curls her hands into fists. He doesn't want to be touched. She doesn't trust herself to touch safely in this moment.]
I won't. I won't. I'm sorry. They should never have--
[Heat rises in her throat as she speaks, starts to emanate as flame at the root of her tongue. She has to close her mouth and swallow it down.]
[Alucard's head snaps up at the sond of ice. It's a distinct sort of cracking, and it nearly brings him back to himself. Something about all the water being bad for the books. That the ink is going to get on everything and be impossible to clean and--
--and none of that comes out. There's only a far too fragile dhampir that's admitted to what's still the second worst thing he's ever done, and every part of him wants to just fall apart like the glass of the ink well.
Words don't come. They try, but in the end, there's just Alucard shaking his head, inaudible and impossible. Finally--]
[This time, she gets out ahead of her mouth. This time, she does not immediately offer the truth: that she and Trevor removed the bodies. The lie of omission burns as intensely as the flame she chokes down.
Later. When he can stand to hear it.] As a warning? You don't think they were working alone?
[He's slurring. Sypha can't recall ever hearing Alucard speak with anything other than sharp, posh syllables. That can't be good.]
It won't matter whether others come, you won't be alone to be blindsided.
[The Castle's mobility engine may be beyond their ability to repair, but they can lock it down with magics, free him from this place. Put an end to this hermitude.]
We can do that. We can seal it. [Somewhere at the back of her mind is the barest uncurling seed of a thought - something to do with the nature of Infinity Corridors and Castles that slip through spatial boundaries. She can't quite make out the shape of it yet, but if she leaves it be long enough, it just might unfurl into something recognizable. Something useful. For now, sealing is a thing she already knows and can apply.] Seal it, ward it, and take the fight to our enemies. Just as before.
[Sypha leans forward, hands fisted on the tabletop. She breathes steam again, but it's less perceptible this time. Control, control.] We won't leave you here. I don't want to leave you here. But we also need you. We failed in Lindenfeld because you weren't with us, Adrian, I truly believe that. We're all better together.
[It's a declaration that finally has some heat in the dhampir's voice. That has him looking up to meet Sypha's eyes, certain about at least one thing.]
I cannot account for myself or my control, and to be around others is an unacceptable risk. It's better to seal this place with me in it.
[She meets that heat with more ice, unblinking blue eyes and a marble-carved face that could give any vampire politician a run for their money.] Self defense isn't a loss of control. You were betrayed. There's a difference.
Besides, [Her brow furrows the tiniest bit, the need to emote pushing through the instinct to out-declare the most declarative person she's ever met.] do you really think we'd let you hurt anyone? Or either of us? We won't bury you alive in here out of cowardice!
I made the conscious choice of what to do with those remains. That's a lack of control and falling into patterns that I would have and should abhor.
[He's a monster, stop saying otherwise. Please, please. Let it be obvious he's beyond any sort of redemption. Then the eye contact breaks. Alucard's voice grows smaller.]
You both deserve better than the thing you're talking to right now.
I'm not saying it was a...good choice after the fact. [Sypha will readily admit that much. Thinking about them, their garments (nightshirts - she hates that she knows this now) flapping in the wind, heads flopping back on their necks like unattended puppets, sends a twist of unease through her gut.] But we've all done things we regret out of hurt and fear. Those mistakes don't define us unless we knowingly repeat them.
[Very slowly, very carefully, Sypha reaches out to tuck his hair out of his face. She does not cup his cheek the way she aches to do, or run her thumb along his crumpled brow. But she can make sure he can see her if he so chooses.] They hurt you. They gained your trust first, and they hurt you. But I know you Adrian, and I know you were trying to warn others away from being as suicidally stupid as best you could. So don't you try to tell me what I do and don't deserve.
[There's more she could say, about how she and Trevor are hardly paragons of great sense or success themselves, but no. Not now, not until he stops thinking of himself as less than human for melting down.]
[Alucard flinches when Sypha reaches towards him. It is only through sheer grit that he doesn't jerk away entirely - he'd just send himself on the floor, most likely.
He tries to listen. He does. But in all of Sypha's words all he hears is justification for awful acts, all in her voice. Somehow that just makes it worse. He's put her in a position where those actions have to be said to be understood. Not acceptable. But understood.
[For the third (fourth? fifth?) time, Sypha draws herself away. Specifically, she slides off the table and steps towards the door.] All right. I'll join Trevor in the Hold. It hasn't got a magical search function, he probably needs the help.
We'll...see you at breakfast. [Or she'll track him down again. Conceding to his wish for space, while he's like this, is as much as she's capable of doing.
And even then she cannot do it quietly. Sypha goes to the Hold, all right, but she stops at the bottom of the pit that once housed the circular staircase. Using pistons of ice, she shoots chunks of debris into the air and blasts them apart with wildly flung fireballs. This goes on until she's wrung out, dripping with sweat, the urge to scream killed by her grunts of effort.
She's utterly unsurprised to find Trevor watching her from the Hold's reconstructed doorway. His gaze is an open question, and Sypha does not hesitate to lay out the answers she's found.
When she's done, Trevor disappears into the woods with a hatchet in hand, lips curled back over his eyeteeth. He comes back in the wee hours of the morning with enough split logs to warm the whole Castle for a week. His anger, it turns out, is more productive than hers, at least when there's no alcohol on offer.
They don't talk about it within the Castle's walls, both too conscious of Alucard's superior hearing and silent footsteps. And Alucard, well, he holds to the letter of her request, if not the spirit of it, by appearing only as a lanky white wolf.
It makes for interesting breakfast conversation, but Sypha knows she's not the only one concerned when he turns up for the next meal the same way. And the one after that. And the one after that.]
"We can't keep on like this." [Trevor says one evening as they return from the Hold, his arms weighed down with all the books she's annotated for copying or translation. He grumbles about playing the glorified pack mule, but he never says no.]
We just have to wait him out, [Sypha reasons, because she feels it too. The ticking clock over their heads. The pressing knowledge that they're no closer to solving the riddle of the Infinity Corridor. The fact that Alucard's been a wolf for days.] He's been through something terrible. And he never had a chance to heal from the other terrible things that happened beforehand!
"I know, but-"
Also, he mentioned there might be more useful information in Dracula's private library, but not where it was or how to get into it or even if that would upset him!
"Yes, but-"
And I'm not leaving him again! I can't! We can't! He's our friend, he deserves better from--
"Sypha, I am trying to agree with you!" [Trevor has to all but holler to cut her off. They're outside the kitchen now, staring heatedly at one another. Sypha breathes hard through her nose, days of poorly stifled emotion boiling her blood. Trevor stomps into the room and dumps her books at the table, then turns back to her.] "We won't leave him. But we may need to truss him up and toss him in the wagon, that's all I'm saying."
[Sypha slumps towards him, coming up close and then leaning into him until her face is buried in his chest and his arms come round her shoulders. She hides her wobbly lower lip and reddened eyes and muffles her uneven breaths.] I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make it sound like you don't care. I know you do. I'm just...everything's so awful. I want to fix it. I don't know how.
[That first night, Alucard doesn't remove himself from the library at all. Movement requires too much effort, and that has been drained from him utterly. Telling Sypha what happened - even just a version of it - left him utterly bereft of the ability to do more but drown in an exquisite sort of misery that he had gotten used to. The kind that clawed at him and pulled him back down against the rock bottom sea of despair that he had been drowning in since he and his father first argued about proper recompense for Lisa's murder.
He has just enough energy to turn into a wolf come morning, and he wills himself to the breakfast table only because Sypha will come and find him if he is absent. There's a part of him that still cares and wants the esteem of the other two, all while the rest tries to pull away. The wolf is unhappy, yes, curled up in a tight little ball of fluff and growling if anyone attempts to pet him, but the wolf is there.
The next few days are the same, save for the fact that there are always two baskets of foraged goods on the kitchen counter. Sometimes a rabbit that needs to be skinned before cooking. Enough for two to live on, and whatever Alucard is doing for food, well, it too is probably in the woods.
Eventually the wolf grows restless. In the deep, dark parts of the night, the wolf is Alucard again, quietly going through Dracula's private library. An octagonal room with impossibly beautifully bound books, the calf skin and human skin impossible to differentiate from each other. Neat handwriting on the spines indicate years or collected research topics, and Alucard goes through the card catalog to see what of these Corridors can be found.
In the library, he deposits five books besides Sypha's research area. But Alucard isn't there when she finally comes to see - just that wolf, curled up in front of vent pushing out warm air.]
[What passes for 'routine' resumes after her mini meltdown in the kitchen. Neither Sypha nor Trevor set a date on their eventual departure, but it looms over her just the same. If they can't pin down a possible location for an Infinite Corridor nexus, then they'll need to get back out in the world and track down rumors of Dracula's cult. It's early summer, the roads will be full of travelers and traders, even other Speakers - the best time to hunt by word of mouth.
She'd like to know more about the Corridors first. Starting with: how to close them. Saint Germaine hadn't seen fit to share that information before everything went wrong.
Although...suppose she modifies a locator spell to search out Saint Germaine?
Sypha dashes to the library, but pulls up short at the new stack of books on 'her' desk. They're uncommonly well bound, unlike anything she's seen even in this unparalleled library. She traces the cover of the topmost volume and looks around for any sign of Alucard, the only person who could possibly know where to produce even more wonderful books from the Castle.
No dhampir graces the place with his presence, but she does find the wolf. Sypha hesitates by a worktable for a moment, then marches over and sits down on the other side of the vent. She folds her legs tailor-style and opens the first of the new books on her knee.]
You had luck in the extra special secret library, I see!
[The wolf doesn't lift his head when the scent of Sypha fills the room. It is a familiar thing, yes, a mix of old tomes, well bound leather, and that perpetual scent of green that comes from traveling the road for a lifetime. He stays still, curled up where he is and appreciating how wonderful it is to just suck up all the warm air.
But then Sypha approaches. Hell, just gets comfy, and the wolf can only just snort in quiet acknowledgement that she's there and has decided that this is where she's going to do her research. None of Alucard is surprised, admittedly, but it does take a little out of his plan to be fluffy and alone.
He lifts his head from being a curled up tight little fluff ball and rearranges himself. Now, his head rests on his paws and gold eyes look up at her.
There's a nod. Yes, he did. And there are bookmarks sticking out of the journals.]
[Let it be noted that Sypha does not reach over and immediately run her fingers through that plush-looking fur. In fact, she's due retroactive credit for keeping her hands to herself these past few days.
But where it's easy to respect humanoid-Alucard's icy demeanor now and then, it's much harder not to smile down at the wolf with its tail flipped over its nose. Impossible not to giggle when it nods, even though she's well acquainted with the intelligence behind those eyes.]
Excellent work, Inspector Lupus.
[She settles in to read, flipping from marked section to marked section with avid curiosity. Oh. This one's in Enochian, which immediately sets her pulse racing - the older a source, the more likely to be a root version which others mirror.
The Corridors, it posits, connect not just time, but also space. And yes, possibilities, a near infinite variety of them. The power needed to bring the Corridor to bear on a single version of Vlad Tepes found at the end of this particular branch of probability was...more than she can get her head around, bigger even than the massacre at Lindenfeld. That Night Creature must have had an earlier reservoir of power, or else the Corridor itself was dormant and sluggish in some sense. Sypha frowns and hunches forward, so intent on the words her nose nearly brushes the pages.]
Well, that at least gets the wolf to pick up his head and offer the Speaker a disapproving glare at the new nickname. Not a fan, Sypha. Not. A. Fan.
But the moment passes. Alucard settles back down into his tight little fluff ball, the only thing moving being his eyes. He can track which books Sypha has gone through with ease, and it seems like he's found a few good ones if her nose on the page itself is any indication.
He can be proud enough with that. But the day progresses, and Alucard eventually needs to stretch. The great lumbering wolf uncurls itself and lets out a looooooooooong whine as muscles adjust to a new position.
More than that though, one stretched the wolf walks right over to Sypha. Tilts it's head, because surely she must have found something in all of that.]
[tic tic tic go claws on the varnished floorboards. Sypha lowers her book and squints against a sudden headache - or perhaps it's been there a while and she just hadn't noticed - surprised to find Alucard standing right in front of her.]
The Corridors only anchor temporarily. Although, 'temporarily' may be measured in geological terms here, rather than human comprehension. Any map we dig up has no guarantee of being accurate, and Saint Germaine's not around to explain how to construct a detection device. Oh, and attuning a Corridor takes a truly mindboggling amount of power. Enough that your father didn't consider them a potential option to save your mother, or, or find a version of her from a reality just a little to the left of our own.
[She pauses for breath to rake her hair from her face, but leaps right back into infodumping.] The unwilling sacrifice of all the souls in Lindenfeld would have done part of it, but I think the unwilling reinvestment of souls by the Forgemasters may have played another roll. It works both ways, you see? Feeding one into the other would have created a kind of...of perpetual motion machine!
[Theory stacked upon theory stacked upon theory. Sypha slumps back against the wall, hands in her hair.] There will be more Lindenfelds until they achieve their goal. Unless we stop them. We have to stop them, we have--
[Inspector Lupus, brilliant and fluffy as he is, cannot reply. So, alas, Inspector Lupus must take a moment away from the case. Enter Inspector Sad Vampire.
Who has clearly been listening, and whose eyes are on the research material spread across Sypha's work area. A pale hand rests on top of one of the maps, like that'll help him absorb the information. It won't, obviously, but the thought of it is rather nice.]
I'm not sure that the perpetual motion concept holds water. They may only be better attuned to locating these Corridors because of some natural ability or calling, and hence they can seek out the locations with greater precision. So what that means is we're served by seeing where large flocks of these things go. Your people and their information pathways might be the best chance of dealing with the matter.
[It's all bullshit, but Alucard likes to think it sounds plausible.]
To me the problem is getting there in a reasonable amount of time. Horses and humans can only move so many miles in a day.
[How can a change so monumental be so silent? The air shifts, displaces, but there's no snapping of bone or creaking of muscle. One minute, wolf, the next, Alucard leaning over the map. Sypha's chained so tightly to her thoughts, she doubletakes. Her neck pops.]
I...yes, that could account for the observed evidence. [She brushes her fingers over the splayed papers, back and forth in nervous arcs.] Track the creatures, or track the cultists, who the creatures use to collect the energy? The Night Creatures are easier to keep tabs on, but the cultists display specific behaviors and are rooted in place. Search for overlaps.
[Activating the Speaker network is an excellent idea, though Sypha knows from her brief reunion with the caravan that her people took heavy losses during Dracula's war. The flood of darkness rerouted their long established information channels; linking them back will be the work of decades. Still it's better than nothing.
But the response time...] When you say it's 'impossible' to repair the Castle, how literal are you being?
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Is this what Trevor hears in his head, all the time?
When Alucard pulls again, she lets him draw away from the immediate blanketing contact but does not let go of her hold on his shoulder. His hair slips from her fingers and puddles just everywhere, again.] I'm not trying to fix you, Adrian. We can't change what's already been done. But we can help each other live with it, can't we?
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[It isn't an accusation. It's a statement of tortured fact, because something else has been unlocked.]
If you were I wouldn't have-- [Alucard breathes out, trying to at least get his breathing under control.] They wouldn't have thought their attempt on my life could be accomplished through affection, they wouldn't be on the lawn--
[There. He's managed that much. It's his confession of what happened in their absence.]
I don't want to live with that.
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Her rapidly chaining thoughts shatter into separate, disconnected links, when he starts talking about a 'they'. An attempt on his life. Something he's done. Something she was not here for. She doesn't, can't, know where this conversation has gone, but she can make a leap and hope she lands on answers.]
Alucard. Adrian, please. What attempt? Who hurt you? [She's straightened up, hands slipping away only to reconnect by settling over his. The tips of her fingers stretch to the red mark at the very edge of his shirtcuff.] I don't understand. I can't fix it, but you don't need to be alone with this either.
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The two things on the front lawn.
[Alucard has vowed to never utter their names.]
Rather than try and kill me outright as Trevor did upon our first meeting they waited and bedded me before attacking.
[His tone is so terribly hollow when it finally gets said out loud. As is the clarification:]
Please don't make me go into detail.
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Ice spreads from her fingertips, licking across the tabletop in a shameful lack of control. It licks the spines of the books and limns the beetle-chewed edges of their pages. A glass inkwell shatters at the abrupt temperature change, pelting her hip and forearm with black shards.
The ice retracts to nothing with Sypha's next sharp intake of breath. She breathes it out in a dense cloud of fog and curls her hands into fists. He doesn't want to be touched. She doesn't trust herself to touch safely in this moment.]
I won't. I won't. I'm sorry. They should never have--
[Heat rises in her throat as she speaks, starts to emanate as flame at the root of her tongue. She has to close her mouth and swallow it down.]
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--and none of that comes out. There's only a far too fragile dhampir that's admitted to what's still the second worst thing he's ever done, and every part of him wants to just fall apart like the glass of the ink well.
Words don't come. They try, but in the end, there's just Alucard shaking his head, inaudible and impossible. Finally--]
S'why they're still there.
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[This time, she gets out ahead of her mouth. This time, she does not immediately offer the truth: that she and Trevor removed the bodies. The lie of omission burns as intensely as the flame she chokes down.
Later. When he can stand to hear it.] As a warning? You don't think they were working alone?
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[The castle, he means.]
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It won't matter whether others come, you won't be alone to be blindsided.
[The Castle's mobility engine may be beyond their ability to repair, but they can lock it down with magics, free him from this place. Put an end to this hermitude.]
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No. The castle will be inaccessible first. It has to be.
[He has to be here, after all. Now more than ever, because he's already done this thing. What else might come if he's allowed near other people now?]
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[Sypha leans forward, hands fisted on the tabletop. She breathes steam again, but it's less perceptible this time. Control, control.] We won't leave you here. I don't want to leave you here. But we also need you. We failed in Lindenfeld because you weren't with us, Adrian, I truly believe that. We're all better together.
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[It's a declaration that finally has some heat in the dhampir's voice. That has him looking up to meet Sypha's eyes, certain about at least one thing.]
I cannot account for myself or my control, and to be around others is an unacceptable risk. It's better to seal this place with me in it.
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Besides, [Her brow furrows the tiniest bit, the need to emote pushing through the instinct to out-declare the most declarative person she's ever met.] do you really think we'd let you hurt anyone? Or either of us? We won't bury you alive in here out of cowardice!
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[He's a monster, stop saying otherwise. Please, please. Let it be obvious he's beyond any sort of redemption. Then the eye contact breaks. Alucard's voice grows smaller.]
You both deserve better than the thing you're talking to right now.
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[Very slowly, very carefully, Sypha reaches out to tuck his hair out of his face. She does not cup his cheek the way she aches to do, or run her thumb along his crumpled brow. But she can make sure he can see her if he so chooses.] They hurt you. They gained your trust first, and they hurt you. But I know you Adrian, and I know you were trying to warn others away from being as suicidally stupid as best you could. So don't you try to tell me what I do and don't deserve.
[There's more she could say, about how she and Trevor are hardly paragons of great sense or success themselves, but no. Not now, not until he stops thinking of himself as less than human for melting down.]
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He tries to listen. He does. But in all of Sypha's words all he hears is justification for awful acts, all in her voice. Somehow that just makes it worse. He's put her in a position where those actions have to be said to be understood. Not acceptable. But understood.
Eventually, he responds.]
I think I'd like to be alone now.
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We'll...see you at breakfast. [Or she'll track him down again. Conceding to his wish for space, while he's like this, is as much as she's capable of doing.
And even then she cannot do it quietly. Sypha goes to the Hold, all right, but she stops at the bottom of the pit that once housed the circular staircase. Using pistons of ice, she shoots chunks of debris into the air and blasts them apart with wildly flung fireballs. This goes on until she's wrung out, dripping with sweat, the urge to scream killed by her grunts of effort.
She's utterly unsurprised to find Trevor watching her from the Hold's reconstructed doorway. His gaze is an open question, and Sypha does not hesitate to lay out the answers she's found.
When she's done, Trevor disappears into the woods with a hatchet in hand, lips curled back over his eyeteeth. He comes back in the wee hours of the morning with enough split logs to warm the whole Castle for a week. His anger, it turns out, is more productive than hers, at least when there's no alcohol on offer.
They don't talk about it within the Castle's walls, both too conscious of Alucard's superior hearing and silent footsteps. And Alucard, well, he holds to the letter of her request, if not the spirit of it, by appearing only as a lanky white wolf.
It makes for interesting breakfast conversation, but Sypha knows she's not the only one concerned when he turns up for the next meal the same way. And the one after that. And the one after that.]
"We can't keep on like this." [Trevor says one evening as they return from the Hold, his arms weighed down with all the books she's annotated for copying or translation. He grumbles about playing the glorified pack mule, but he never says no.]
We just have to wait him out, [Sypha reasons, because she feels it too. The ticking clock over their heads. The pressing knowledge that they're no closer to solving the riddle of the Infinity Corridor. The fact that Alucard's been a wolf for days.] He's been through something terrible. And he never had a chance to heal from the other terrible things that happened beforehand!
"I know, but-"
Also, he mentioned there might be more useful information in Dracula's private library, but not where it was or how to get into it or even if that would upset him!
"Yes, but-"
And I'm not leaving him again! I can't! We can't! He's our friend, he deserves better from--
"Sypha, I am trying to agree with you!" [Trevor has to all but holler to cut her off. They're outside the kitchen now, staring heatedly at one another. Sypha breathes hard through her nose, days of poorly stifled emotion boiling her blood. Trevor stomps into the room and dumps her books at the table, then turns back to her.] "We won't leave him. But we may need to truss him up and toss him in the wagon, that's all I'm saying."
[Sypha slumps towards him, coming up close and then leaning into him until her face is buried in his chest and his arms come round her shoulders. She hides her wobbly lower lip and reddened eyes and muffles her uneven breaths.] I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make it sound like you don't care. I know you do. I'm just...everything's so awful. I want to fix it. I don't know how.
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He has just enough energy to turn into a wolf come morning, and he wills himself to the breakfast table only because Sypha will come and find him if he is absent. There's a part of him that still cares and wants the esteem of the other two, all while the rest tries to pull away. The wolf is unhappy, yes, curled up in a tight little ball of fluff and growling if anyone attempts to pet him, but the wolf is there.
The next few days are the same, save for the fact that there are always two baskets of foraged goods on the kitchen counter. Sometimes a rabbit that needs to be skinned before cooking. Enough for two to live on, and whatever Alucard is doing for food, well, it too is probably in the woods.
Eventually the wolf grows restless. In the deep, dark parts of the night, the wolf is Alucard again, quietly going through Dracula's private library. An octagonal room with impossibly beautifully bound books, the calf skin and human skin impossible to differentiate from each other. Neat handwriting on the spines indicate years or collected research topics, and Alucard goes through the card catalog to see what of these Corridors can be found.
In the library, he deposits five books besides Sypha's research area. But Alucard isn't there when she finally comes to see - just that wolf, curled up in front of vent pushing out warm air.]
no subject
She'd like to know more about the Corridors first. Starting with: how to close them. Saint Germaine hadn't seen fit to share that information before everything went wrong.
Although...suppose she modifies a locator spell to search out Saint Germaine?
Sypha dashes to the library, but pulls up short at the new stack of books on 'her' desk. They're uncommonly well bound, unlike anything she's seen even in this unparalleled library. She traces the cover of the topmost volume and looks around for any sign of Alucard, the only person who could possibly know where to produce even more wonderful books from the Castle.
No dhampir graces the place with his presence, but she does find the wolf. Sypha hesitates by a worktable for a moment, then marches over and sits down on the other side of the vent. She folds her legs tailor-style and opens the first of the new books on her knee.]
You had luck in the extra special secret library, I see!
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But then Sypha approaches. Hell, just gets comfy, and the wolf can only just snort in quiet acknowledgement that she's there and has decided that this is where she's going to do her research. None of Alucard is surprised, admittedly, but it does take a little out of his plan to be fluffy and alone.
He lifts his head from being a curled up tight little fluff ball and rearranges himself. Now, his head rests on his paws and gold eyes look up at her.
There's a nod. Yes, he did. And there are bookmarks sticking out of the journals.]
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But where it's easy to respect humanoid-Alucard's icy demeanor now and then, it's much harder not to smile down at the wolf with its tail flipped over its nose. Impossible not to giggle when it nods, even though she's well acquainted with the intelligence behind those eyes.]
Excellent work, Inspector Lupus.
[She settles in to read, flipping from marked section to marked section with avid curiosity. Oh. This one's in Enochian, which immediately sets her pulse racing - the older a source, the more likely to be a root version which others mirror.
The Corridors, it posits, connect not just time, but also space. And yes, possibilities, a near infinite variety of them. The power needed to bring the Corridor to bear on a single version of Vlad Tepes found at the end of this particular branch of probability was...more than she can get her head around, bigger even than the massacre at Lindenfeld. That Night Creature must have had an earlier reservoir of power, or else the Corridor itself was dormant and sluggish in some sense. Sypha frowns and hunches forward, so intent on the words her nose nearly brushes the pages.]
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Well, that at least gets the wolf to pick up his head and offer the Speaker a disapproving glare at the new nickname. Not a fan, Sypha. Not. A. Fan.
But the moment passes. Alucard settles back down into his tight little fluff ball, the only thing moving being his eyes. He can track which books Sypha has gone through with ease, and it seems like he's found a few good ones if her nose on the page itself is any indication.
He can be proud enough with that. But the day progresses, and Alucard eventually needs to stretch. The great lumbering wolf uncurls itself and lets out a looooooooooong whine as muscles adjust to a new position.
More than that though, one stretched the wolf walks right over to Sypha. Tilts it's head, because surely she must have found something in all of that.]
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The Corridors only anchor temporarily. Although, 'temporarily' may be measured in geological terms here, rather than human comprehension. Any map we dig up has no guarantee of being accurate, and Saint Germaine's not around to explain how to construct a detection device. Oh, and attuning a Corridor takes a truly mindboggling amount of power. Enough that your father didn't consider them a potential option to save your mother, or, or find a version of her from a reality just a little to the left of our own.
[She pauses for breath to rake her hair from her face, but leaps right back into infodumping.] The unwilling sacrifice of all the souls in Lindenfeld would have done part of it, but I think the unwilling reinvestment of souls by the Forgemasters may have played another roll. It works both ways, you see? Feeding one into the other would have created a kind of...of perpetual motion machine!
[Theory stacked upon theory stacked upon theory. Sypha slumps back against the wall, hands in her hair.] There will be more Lindenfelds until they achieve their goal. Unless we stop them. We have to stop them, we have--
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Who has clearly been listening, and whose eyes are on the research material spread across Sypha's work area. A pale hand rests on top of one of the maps, like that'll help him absorb the information. It won't, obviously, but the thought of it is rather nice.]
I'm not sure that the perpetual motion concept holds water. They may only be better attuned to locating these Corridors because of some natural ability or calling, and hence they can seek out the locations with greater precision. So what that means is we're served by seeing where large flocks of these things go. Your people and their information pathways might be the best chance of dealing with the matter.
[It's all bullshit, but Alucard likes to think it sounds plausible.]
To me the problem is getting there in a reasonable amount of time. Horses and humans can only move so many miles in a day.
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I...yes, that could account for the observed evidence. [She brushes her fingers over the splayed papers, back and forth in nervous arcs.] Track the creatures, or track the cultists, who the creatures use to collect the energy? The Night Creatures are easier to keep tabs on, but the cultists display specific behaviors and are rooted in place. Search for overlaps.
[Activating the Speaker network is an excellent idea, though Sypha knows from her brief reunion with the caravan that her people took heavy losses during Dracula's war. The flood of darkness rerouted their long established information channels; linking them back will be the work of decades. Still it's better than nothing.
But the response time...] When you say it's 'impossible' to repair the Castle, how literal are you being?
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