Chapter Text
As the streets of France metaphorically ran red with the blood of those that aligned with the vampires, Alucard noted a stirring. A strangeness, both in the air, the aura of the street. The common folk whispered of ‘demons’ in the night, though Alucard knew that the sympathetic night creatures had scattered to the winds to eke out as normal lives as they could now despite what had happened to them. No, the more he listened in the darkened doorways and standing by lit by candle and darkened by night windows, the more they spoke of new monstrosities. Creatures of poisonous gas but high intellect, creatures that could change from organic to inorganic materials, things that charged electricity and utilised it like a weapon, creatures that attacked the mind and had left two humans mentally crippled with no change in sight to their conditions. These creatures sounded like something worse than night creatures, and he had gone to investigate.
He bore the fruit of that investigation to Maria and Juste.
“I found this in the backstreets, trying to kill a woman,” He said, dragging the humanoid insectoid creature that he had just barely managed to kill, allowing the woman to run screaming into the night, behind him.
It had been terrifyingly fast, and that backstreet bore the kiss of Alucard’s blade many times over as he had tried to match speed with the creature, and then having to deal with the creature’s chitinous armour changing on him, changing from a gel like structure that took more blunt strikes of his blade, to something stronger than steel to deflect his sharper strikes. It had also been incredibly intelligent, learning Alucard’s fighting patterns and starting to dodge, deflect or even parry his blows with ease. It had finally taken him engaging the creature in close quarters, falling into striking it with his fists to distract it before his sword could be drawn to stab through a thin sliver of unprotected flesh between its armoured head and its thick neck. He had taken its head in his hands and had twisted until he had heard a wet snap just to confirm its death.
Maria scowled as it flopped to the floor of the house that they were using in town as they made sure all the vampires in town were dead, as well as killing off any aggressive night creatures and sending friendly ones safely out of town. Thankfully no blood, because Alucard knew that this was someone’s home, just that someone was busy helping others around town and was staying elsewhere in the meantime. It would not do to ruin the floors and be terrible guests.
“Is it a night creature?” She asked, hesitantly kicking one thick arm with her shoe.
“I don’t think so, no night creature has powers as complex as this one had,” Alucard mused, looking down at the creature that resembled something like a beetle. Even lifeless, its oil slick coloured shell gleamed and shined like a skillfully polished gemstone. “While we fought, it changed the structure of itself to absorb or deflect blows, it was incredibly fast and it was incredibly intelligent.”
“Some of the night creatures did have fantastic powers,” Juste mused, scowling at the creature as he looked it over.
“There have been others. Intelligent clouds of poisonous gas, creatures that could change from flesh to steel and creatures that could assault the mind,” Alucard said, “None of those creatures' sound like any night creature that I have ever fought. Also, night creatures still had parts of their former human bodies, and they did follow some laws of the natural world. Gas clouds and creatures being able to go from flesh to steel do not follow that.”
The three looked down at this creature, all of their minds working to puzzle out what this was. It still very well could have been a night creature, but that was worrying in its own right, because that meant another forgemaster was at work and this one seemed to be even more skilled than Maria’s late father and his terrible machine. But it was also worrying if it was not, because where had it come from? Who had made it and with such murderous qualities? Why was these things now crawling through the streets of this city? More importantly, given that these creatures seemed to have a particular taste for human death, how could a permanent stop be put to them?
“First, we need to see where they are coming from,” Maria said, stepping away from the creature, going over to a shelf in the main room.
While she fiddled with whatever was over there, Alucard dragged the corpse away. There were still burning pyres where corpses were being burned, though thankfully fewer and fewer now. Out in an open cobblestoned area, he dragged the creature to a small burning pyre, scowling when he saw another strange creature, this one a lizard-like creature, that was definitely not humanoid in shape, that the flames had been feasting on for some time, smoke curling as its flesh was consumed by the fire. Alucard heaved the beetle-like creature into the fires, giving nods to the smoke and ash peppered faces of the two haunted and tired looking men tending to it. They both just looked at the creature with a tired sense of resignation, as though some other plague of monsters was just what they had expected. Alucard swore to end this, quickly making it back to the house to see that Juste and Maria had splayed a map on the kitchen table, holding the ends with various things.
“If we can pinpoint where they’re coming from…” Juste hummed in thought, fingers to his chin as he squinted at the map.
A good idea. So, Alucard first pointed to backstreet that he had fought the beetle-like thing. It was marked with a nut from a bowl of them, given that they were not eager to mark the map with ink or cuts. Alucard also offered some vague locations that he had heard through rumours, each place getting diligently marked with another of their markers. They spoke at length about what was around each place, sparking confusion because none of these were around any clusters of people, weak structures or even valuable offensive or defensive positions. Eventually they came to realise that they simply did not have enough clues and needed to go out to find out more and possibly kill more creatures.
“They do seem active solely at night,” Alucard said after they had stared hard at the map, as though it would yield more to them from sight alone.
“Nocturnal?” Maria offered, frowning at the map. At some point, she had gathered up her blonde hair into a bow, to keep the waist length mess out of her face as she bent over the map. It made her look younger. Alucard did not like to think that she was still a child, it only broke his heart when he thought about what she had been through.
“In that case, they must hide somewhere during the day…” Juste muttered, staring at the map for a moment, before his aged eyes opened wider in realisation and he gestured to areas around where their markers were, pointing to each in turn as he spoke. “The sewers! Each one of these is around one of the sewer entrances. They must hide there during the day and come out at night to attack.”
“Where they are coming from might also be down there as well,” Alucard agreed, lifting his head to squint at a nearby window, where the setting sun was throwing golden light through the slightly warped glass. “If they are spawning from down there, or there is a nest, we should eliminate it as soon as possible.”
“How do you want to go about this?” Juste asked, rising while thumping his lower back.
“These things are not easy to kill,” Alucard said, glancing from the window and the light that stung his eyes sharply. Even if he did not burn like his vampiric lineage, it still prickled and stun sharper than any human had experienced. “The humans can be rallied, but they will need help. How would you two like staying topside while I go under and try to find the source to quickly end?”
“I don’t know, you’d be by yourself with those things, maybe a nest of them,” Maria scowled. Alucard could see the bubbling rage inside of her. Even if she had pulled herself back from the darkness, it had left its dark mark on her young soul. The entirety of the bullshit that they had survived had. Alucard feared what that temper would lead her to do, feared how eagerly she sought to fight.
“The people up top need us, Maria,” Juste said, also levelling a worried look at her. He too, must have had the same thought, though wisely wiped the expression from his face when Maria turned her burning eyes on him, “We might get lucky and few creatures might be down there protecting whatever the fuck is making them, in which case it might be easier for Alucard to destroy it on his own.”
“He might also be walking into an army of them down there,” Maria pressed, getting angrier.
“I understand, Maria,” Alucard offered diplomatically, “I would not be so foolhardy as to rush down there, nor would I foolishly try to fight an army. But if the means of these creatures being here and now is down there, I need to at least see if it is. I promise you that I will not do anything foolish, and if there is an army, I will come topside and gather you two.”
Maria, still angry and looking for a fight, seemed slightly mollified that she was being listened to. Alucard hoped that enough creatures with enough skill crawled out of the sewers tonight, he feared that she would charge down to join him if not, and now that it had been said, he really did fear if an army of those creatures was down there. That damned beetle had been enough trouble as it had been, he had no idea how he was going to fight gaseous clouds or creatures that attacked the psyche. His vampiric traits was probably the only reason that he had not been overwhelmed, he shuddered to think those things bearing down on Juste and Maria.
“Fine,” She grumbled.
“Let’s get out there. Now that we have an idea that they’re coming out of sewers, we can quickly call for a curfew and get people away from sewer entrances,” Juste said, turning to give Alucard a concerned look, “And you better come get us if there’s an army. I will not have Richter come back, only to hear that your precious pale head had been ripped from your body by something that crawled out of the sewers.”
“A terrible thing that would be, he would make a joke,” Alucard mused.
Maria’s sullen mouth twitched with her need to smile and Juste laughed.
The two did not need much preparation for a fight, thankfully, because they had barely been ready for a second before the distant echo of a scream rang through the air. Maria and Juste ran without a word, Maria summoning her birds as the two took off at an impressive pace, leaving Alucard to gather himself before heading for the nearest sewer entrance towards the edge of one side of town. His nose wrinkled at the smell, the heinous scent more potent with his heightened senses, but he powered through, using the butt of his blade to break the simple lock before gingerly forcing the rusted doorway open with the sound of squealing metal.
Thankfully he did not need to bow walk over a stream of sludge, waste and human garbage, as there were two relatively wide walkways on either side of said stream. He still swept his cloak over one shoulder to keep the sludge far away from it, hurrying along as he used his keen sense of hearing to keep an ear out for those creatures as the light dimmed and then faded almost entirely, leaving him in near pitch darkness.
There were creatures down there. Fat dragon-like creatures, though with just another pair of legs instead of wings and ones that vomited acid instead of fire. Roughly a metre high creatures that almost looked like storybook fairies, with smooth pink skin, large cherub-like faces and gossamer like wings that giggled but spent the last time that he had spoken with his father screaming through his mind and left him shaking afterwards. A thick green cloud that had seemed harmless when he had accidentally stepped into it but had stripped the soft mucus membrane of the inside of his nose and mouth and had left him bleeding as he had fruitless cut at it, before fire had quickly burnt it away. Creatures that looked almost like humans, if they had been stripped of skin but seemed fine with it and spoke words that had made Alucard’s head throb with agony and had sent him bent over to upheave his guts. Swarms of insects that Alucard had seen stripped the flesh from a few unfortunate rodents, but had thankfully burned all the same when Alucard refused to let them get close.
Ghoulish things, hellish things, Alucard was convinced that they were not night creatures, because there seemed to be a malice about these creature’s designs. Something about them seemed to have been purposefully made to torture and murder other creatures that the night creatures simply lacked. Whoever had made these creatures was evil in a way that Alucard had not seen in some time, even with his most recent… ‘Adventure’. He swore that he would find the source of these creatures and put an end to them.
He had put down a few, hoping that it was thinning things out for the fight above, but had also worn himself out by the time that he had walked into a large four way connection chamber and saw a flickering portal. There was little light this far into the rather crude stone hallways, so the dark purple light coming off of it seemed all the brighter for it as Alucard took it in, drawing his sword as he saw a few lingering creatures by it. And creatures bisected by it, corpses that the others had been eating or dragging away, as the portal flickered in and out of existence and all without caring about cleaving through whatever was trying to get through. As Alucard watched, the portal came into existence as some stone-like creature tried stepping through, only for the portal to flicker out of existence and slice the creature through its torso and one arm, falling to the ground and exploding in a spray of pebbles.
Well, it looked like there was a portal letting in these creatures, so Alucard needed to do something about it, but first he needed to do something about the creatures surrounding it. Taking up his sword, he faced the first creature around the portal. A bird person with a grotesquely swollen abdomen with another mouth spitting it, both of which hissed at him as he quickly dashed forward, slashing and being met with feathers harder than steel. Thankfully it seemed that it also had bones just as hollow, because he only had to get in close and strike one of its wings to hear the bones snapping within and the creature shrieking in pain, the distraction allowed Alucard to behead it and immediately start moving towards the next creature. This one looked like some sort of slime creature and felt like underneath Alucard’s blade that hissed as it came in contact with the acidic substance. When Alucard kicked it out of frustration into the vile river of filth, it screamed something terrible, hissing as it seemingly dissolved within the mix of liquids, as Alucard’s boot hissed. The next creature was another one of those skinned creatures, but Alucard solved that quickly by just launching fire at it, snarling as it screamed and collapsed into a pile of cooking meat. The next creature was some sort of fish, and his blade stuck to its sticky scales when he tried so slice it, so he had to resort to rather barbaric methods and plunged his free hand in through one massive black fish eye and into its soft skull, kicking its corpse free from his arm and stuck blade as he turned and--
The portal. Alright, he was here. Now what did he do about this strange portal that he had no idea if it was science or magic or some other terrible third thing. Maybe he should have asked Maria to come down here with him, she did have an affinity for portals where terrible little beasties crawled out…
He poked it with his sword. It felt like pressing his sword through bare air, though a shock did tingle along the skin holding the arm. When he pulled it out, he was glad to see his sword still intact. He flexed his fingers along the handle of his sword as he looked at the portal again. Fuck, he really was out of his depth with this. Clearly, it was time to retreat and call for help--
The portal glitched again, disappearing for a moment before reappearing again. But this time glowing a rather poisonous green and having expanded nearly half a metre in all dimensions. Before he could even suck in a breath, it also did something else rather horrific, it started sucking in air and Alucard with it. He tried planting his feet, before realising that there was a rather impressive puddle of blood and various bodily fluids, and his boots slipped. He was taken off his feet and yanked through, Alucard gasping as he thought he was about to experience horrors beyond one’s imagination, but in all honesty, he was only in the air for three seconds before he felt the suction stop and he could quickly gracefully land on one foot, toppling to one knee on the other side as he looked around frantically, trying to figure out what had happened.
He was on a… road? Yes, a dirt impacted road with what looked like the vague echoes of hoof and wagon wheel prints here and there where the road was less impacted as hard as cobblestone. It was also night, the sky black above him and dotted with pearl-like spots of many stars that he… did not recognise. He had spent countless years on earth, he thought he knew the stars pretty damned well and-- holy shit the moon was fucking massive. Not the thumbnail spot of soft pale light, but instead fist sized and a notable shade of yellow. And were there artificial lines on that massive moon? Things that looked vaguely like man-made structures, visibly only because of how massive the planetary body was.
“What the fuck…” He croaked.
There was a scream behind him, he quickly rose to his feet, readying his sword as he looked around and saw some more horrifying things. One, he watched the portal flicker wildly before blinking out of existence entirely, and now that it was not blocking them, Alucard saw that there was a whole army of twisted monstrosities waiting for him, various monstrous mouths salivating with the need for violence, hundreds of eyes glowing or horribly human or bug like or gone entirely watched him with murderous intent, various mutated limbs in all sizes and colours and natural armaments. As Alucard’s eyes darted over the, he counted nearly fifty of them and suddenly had a very bad idea that this was going to kill him.
“I’m sorry, Richter,” Alucard muttered, “You will not be able to make a joke about this one.”
He did plan to go down swinging, he would not go quietly. And when a creature of shifting vines did attack, he did dash forward to meet it. Those vines did cut, but there were so many that the rest quickly tangled his sword and started reaching for him, ready to tangle him as well, forcing him to rip free and dash back. He was tired, he had been fighting these creatures too long and there had been little rest since his last major battle, he was still recovering from digging in deep to use that normally buried power slithering through his veins. This was hopeless.
“You will have to work for my death, bastards,” He growled, brandishing his fangs.
That strangely did something. So many creatures looked ready to kill him, but now some of the crowd looked very unsure, some even ducked down as though in submission. Strange, he had never met a night creature that had recoiled at the thought of attacking a vampire, except those made loyal to his father, but even then Alucard could see that some had wanted to hurt him. Some of these creatures were backing away, unsure. He capitalised, rushing forward and slicing through the vine creatures and shredding it, jumping back when one creature who was undeterred and lurched towards him. He sliced it across its soft, feminine human face before it could sweep its long and razor tipped fingers across his chest, and it lost those too on the back swing. As it screamed, he stabbed forward into its chest and sliced up through its neck and head. He lurched back again, starting to breathe hard as he faced the rest of the crowd.
Several of the creatures turned, starting to make sounds of terror? Some even immediately scattered into the nearby woods with others looking ready for battle for something behind the group. What was going on? Alucard was not sure if he could take on something stronger than this lot, but he took an offensive stance regardless, glaring at the back of the group as he prepared for the worst.
He was not sure what he expected, but it was not for his keen ears to detect the sound of a sword of decent length to leave a well oiled sheath, and then the whisper sharp sound of a sword slicing through the air and then the wet sound of said sword cleaving through flesh. There was a howl of a death rattle, before the creatures started attacking whatever was ahead of them. Taking advantage, he lurched forward and started attacking the backline, taking heads and slicing through torsos and limbs and whatever else these things had, leaving bodies as he cut his way to the front, pushing himself further and further through the bodies and through his growing exhaustion. The crowd thinned between whoever was cutting them down at the front and him cutting through them at the back, so eventually Alucard started to see slivers of whoever it was. He only caught glimpses of dark clothing, white skin, a dark hat, a glint of glowing blue, humanoid in broad shape but he could not get a good enough view to see them.
But he could tell when they saw him, he saw blue eyes darker than the ocean’s deepest depths, and then that blue glow got brighter and brighter. More creatures simply fled for the safety of the woods around them, scattering to the winds and letting him finally see the other person on the other side of this fight. A man, or at least he hoped, dark and strange clothing, a wide brimmed traveller’s hat, a dark cloak and a long curved sword held in one elegant, pale skinned hand. Coils of dark brown hair, wavy hair spilled from underneath the hat and spilled across broad shoulders, swaying with a lunge forward as they sliced through another creature. The blue glow was coming from an amulet hanging from their covered throat.
If they were friend or foe, Alucard was not sure.
The creatures scattered and those that lingered were sliced through by a sword. As the rest of those damnable things fled, it left just the two of them. Alucard panting and this mysterious stranger merely looking, head tipped down enough that Alucard could only see the shape of a well formed chin and set of lips set into a neutral line. And as he stood there, Alcuard’s sense of danger prickled at the back of his mind, telling him that whoever this person was, that they were a force to be reckoned with. In his current state, he was not sure if he could fight them off.
“Who are you?” Alucard rasped.
There was a beat of silence, Alucard getting a sense that he was being assessed, before the person lifted their head. Alucard was not prone to flights of fancy or being taken by idle whims, especially not after… after that. But the face underneath the brim of that wide hat was breathtaking, features fine and delicate and almost like the elves in stories, including a set of gently pointed ears that poked out from the waves of rich brown. More androgynous than anything else, this was a beauty to thwart all beauties, and Alucard was not ashamed to admit that it took a moment to shake himself from his stupor.
“My name is D,” This person said.