Chapter Text
“So you made it.”
“Alucard! I’m glad you’re alright!”
“I’m sorry. ‘Tis my fault you had to fight your own father…”
“Fear not. I had my own reasons for destroying him.”
“It must have been painful for you.”
“Indeed. But you must always remember that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing…”
“I understand.”
“Alucard, what will you do now?”
“The blood that flows in my veins is cursed. ‘Twould be best for this world if I were to disappear forever.”
“I see…”
“Farewell then. We’ll not meet again.”
“Alucard…”
“Don’t you want to go after him, Maria?”
“I’m sorry… I can’t let him disappear from my life.”
“It’s alright. Go after him. Perhaps you can save his haunted soul.”
“Thank you, Richter. Fare thee well.”
“And yourself, dear lady.”
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The lull of their carriage furnished the rest of the morning, trundling with the texture of the road beneath its wheels. When it had stood motionless before the now-ruins of Dracula’s Castle, Richter took to boarding the front, bearing the reins, while Maria and Alucard sat themselves in the cab. Richter had been in silent vigil since the abandonment, but Maria had made attempt to strike a conversation with their newest subject. Doing so put him into a long, aching drone, unpleasant to lay on one’s ears, especially when it dominated the conversation. “I cannot say it was a wise decision, letting you talk me into lingering in the present for longer. My presence on this Earth should remain only in the past, just as any other man.” He turns his eyes away from Maria, beaming through the aperture in the carriage door to the line of trees along the road outside. The grass blades ran up to the gravel, gently streaming against the light breeze.
Maria, her voice soft, gave her measured response as gently as needed. “I called you not because I hated to see you go, but because I hated to see you suffer from your own sense of identity. You say your blood is cursed, yet the only man I see before me is one of valiant motifs.” It had been a half truth, as in complete truth she had hated to see him go, but the half was what mattered to Alucard. He’d spent far too long groveling in the waves of his self pity. Now, it was her most infant desire to pull him from it. She pray Richter would adopt that ambition as well, for two people oft produce more efficient work than just one. Still, he refused to look at her, or even near her. His left set of knuckles came up to his jaw to hold it up, elbow on his thigh. “You’ve only seen what I have shown you, Maria. Richter as well.”
She tried to redirect his attention to look at who he was talking to, but he would only let her turn him as far as the wall that separated them and Richter. With a sigh, she spoke, “only someone with your resolve could have killed their own father. If there is something wrong, you know what you have to do to set it right. Be you cursed or not, I have seen naught of a sliver of evil in your soul. You even refuse to take the throne after your father.”
Alucard could only blink at her statement, staring ahead to the front of the cabin.
“If you believe so much of me, then very well.”
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The carriage house was modest, constructed of mostly stripped logs and only long enough to back the cart in with no more than a foot of leeway. Alucard and Maria had climbed free from the cab inside the carriage, whereas when they opened the door, Richter had already been on his feet and removing the equipment from the animals drawing them. With the horses released from their tugs and breast collars, then turned out to pasture, the mass was free to enter the main building. Both the porch and the house itself were uncomplicated in form and design, yet it still told that the people it housed were held to a higher regard than the common citizen. Rectangular, sure, but the hipped roof made way around a couple of small dormers, and one could easily assume there was some sort of attic space within. The well-crafted door gave way to a large single chamber, evidently a great hall undivided from the kitchen. In the middle of the left wall sat a large hearth, and though it was part of the kitchen, it still had a small oak chair before it, and behind that chair was a rounded table of the same wood. Possibly a set. The kitchen also featured a jacobean hutch for whatever food was capable of staying good long enough to keep stored. An open doorway to the back of the house led to what one could only assume were the sleeping quarters, as well as whatever ladder granted access to the attic.
Richter, though not the first into the building, was the first to pack everything off his person into the tall cabinet in the great room. Strain in his body was made evident with his actions, as the wounds from he and Alucard’s brief battle had weighed especially hard on his shoulder. By the time Maria had thought to offer ministrations, he’d already finished putting away the sacred whip he seldom parted with. Now, at the very least, she could offer to cook for them. She couldn’t predict Richter’s hunger. Knowing he’d been away for some time, he could have been well fed, but he could also be starving. With its unpredictable nature, that was a question for him to answer. “Say, Richter. Are you in need of something to eat?”
“I’ve been fighting my way through what feels like an empty stomach since I was first released from Shaft’s curse. I would be very grateful if you cooked for us,” he spoke, pushing the tall cabinet closed with his arm of better health, his left. “Anything would sate the pit that has grown within me.” Maria nods, crossing the room to browse what stock is in the hutch. The autumn weather had brought them potatoes and maize in their own subsistence farm, alongside what other townspeople could manage to farm in that time.
“Well, I can make a simple stew. That should be enough. If someone could start a fire in the hearth?” She gestures over to the brick structure before reaching for a cast iron pot stored on the flat space beneath a tabletop. “I can’t do any cooking without a flame,” she nods. Richter carries his weary weight to the blackened stones, picking out a few dry lengths of firewood before tenting them up in the base. Placing the logs airs up heaps of ash, the well-burnt scent slightly stinging his nose. When he swivels to the right to ready flint and a striker, an uncomfortable jet of heat paints his side, startling him into jumping away from the fireplace. He nearly loses his balance with his sudden involuntary motion, catching himself on the chair behind him should he topple completely.
“My apologies. I should have warned you beforehand,” Alucard uttered from the other side of the table, the end of his cape sweeping across the floor as it fell back to his feet, having discharged hellfire at such close quarters. He knew the risks, but he knew too that he could handle himself well enough to ignore those bounds. Richter, however, was shaken out of his wits. He’d moved into the seat he caught himself on, gazing into the now-blazing fire that had combusted in the hearth, yet even in the flickering mesmerization of the flames he couldn’t find the will to save his composure. He adjusts deeper into the back of his seat, distancing himself from the flame of vampiric product. It wasn’t that he feared Alucard, but he couldn’t shake the nerves that had rooted during his spar with Dracula that only grew over past years. “I haven’t seen that ilk of magic since I faced Dracula four years ago. Even as you oppose him, you can’t escape your similarities to your father.” Alucard frowns, not wanting to admit to Richter that he shares more than he’d ever care to with his father, but he’s equally opposed to voicing his disdain for that statement. Though, as if sensing the subtlest shift in the air, Richter adds, “yet, you use his instruments of evil in goodwill. His weapons of malice aren’t being used as they should.”
“Maybe ‘tis better I use them improperly. It always depends on scrutiny. What one would see as a harmful weapon could also be a useful tool.”
“And as it’s a useful tool, it could too be a harmful weapon. It’s the dilemma, the dual nature of such things. My own whip has its dual nature, being the tool of my craft, yet seen as a weapon by the bodies it lie.”
“By definition, all weapons are tools, but not all tools are weapons.”
“I could kill a man with a clothesline. Does that make it a weapon as soon as it carries intent, or is it still only a tool?”
“Perhaps it is only considered a weapon after the act is done, or at the very least, attempted.”
“Maybe not to the victim, but in the aggressor’s mind, that tool is a weapon. That tool can be used to kill, and therefore makes it a weapon. If you don’t see the tool as a weapon, it is only a tool.”
“What if I see it as both a tool and a weapon, but it is not always considered a weapon or a tool?”
“Then maybe it is neither. It is what it is in that moment, but when its nature is not considered it is devoid of either title. It has no constant classification as it has no original intention.”
Richter stands, his hand on the end of the chair as he spins it towards the table before sitting back on it. He’d never actually discussed or thought much about what separated a weapon from an ordinary object, but the topic wasn’t exactly as simple as it first seemed. Maria had taken to hanging the pot on the fireplace crane, seemingly unbothered by the supernatural origin of the flame it sat over. Richter himself had dismissed the concern in favor of conversation, because why be bothered by something you’d seen before? The way he’d startled had come back to embarrass him the more he thought about it, yet he allowed it to drift and drive off to where it came from. His mind began to roam elsewhere, how he had the son of Dracula under his own roof, offering him house until he decided what he wanted to do with his life. Either he would return to his sleep, or, well, God knows what a dhampir would do among humans. He wouldn’t endanger them with his own hands, he was sure of that, but just what would Alucard do on his own? Had he any idea how to live in an age three hundred years past his time? The customs, the overall way of life, had it changed that much since his youth? If it had, could Richter help him into it? He needed to know more about the man before pondering the modern life he would choose. Maybe he really knew more than Richter did, and would end up teaching him instead. Coming back to the world, he noticed how Alucard had been standing since they exited the carriage. Offering him a seat would be what he should do for him. “Alucard, you’ve been standing since we arrived. Would you like a seat?”
“My legs do not grow weary like yours. But, I will sit.”
He pulls a chair, fingers light on the wood like he fears his nails will gouge crescents into it through his light gloves. Even settled into a chair, he’s still tight in the shoulders, and Richter knows he’s far more nervous with the humans than he cares to show. With their short debate over, the air falls silent for a moment too long. Alucard attempts to resume a conversation, as now was the time for small talk to avoid a cumbersome air. “I could tell your body was weakened during our fray. He had to have fed you a little, but miscalculated the level of energy a man of your stature needs. Shaft was by no means herculean within the time he was alive, but I will say, ‘tis strange he hadn’t seemed to notice the weakness in your body.”
Richter nods, looking down to the table grain beneath their lines of sight. “It’s possible that while he was able to eliminate my consciousness, he didn’t have full reign over my body and was unable to feel subtle pains such as hunger.”
“That or he chose to ignore it.”
“We’ll never know. I hope we’ll never know.”
“Indeed. Shaft seems to always have his way of coming back to us.”
“At least I’m devoid of worry about surrendering my body to his control, I have that comfort. Still, herculean? I am not that big.”
“Because you’re used to your size. You’re shorter than me, but not by much, and I’m what you would call wiry. You’re very broad in the shoulders, while I take after my mother in terms of… everything, really. At least I try to.”
“Your mother was the blonde?”
“I never once saw my father with blonde hair.”
“Right. Well, a little banter before stew never hurt anybody. Would you want to eat?”
“I ate enough in that castle. I couldn’t eat more if I tried.”
Alucard sighs, beginning to stand from the table once more, even if he hadn’t sat long. He could offer Richter only one genuine comfort, that being, “What happened under Shaft’s curse wasn’t your fault, Richter. You weren’t yourself. Now, I suggest you dress your wounds once more, eat to earn yourself energy, and allow yourself rest. Be fortunate I didn’t harm you greater than I did.” He then turns to saunter to the door, hand resting on the latch before he speaks once more. “Worry not. I plan to return later today. For now, I may find myself learning this town, learning its people and its footprint on the land of which it stands.” With that, he takes leave, the wooden door latching shut behind him as the final affirmation of his departure.
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