| GCB Fanfics: The Fanfiction Project |
August 23th, 2003"Cadenza Beneath the Firmament" Alucard had become accustomed to breakfasting on meals most would consider supper. In his long life, he had striven to observe as many human customs as possible, whether driven by need or desire to do so. And so he sat, out of respect as much as habit, in the Heroes’ Haunt on the night of August 23rd. A trio of candles sat at Alucard’s table, providing the only light in the empty room. The other contestants, and even the barkeep, had already made their way to the stadium in preparation for the match. The chairs in the bar were upturned and sat on the tables, the flickering firelight casting the shadows of their legs against the nearer walls like a sea of arms waving in adulation or in terror. The vampiric prince sat alone, staring out the window at the deep blue moonlit sky specked by the brilliant twinkle of dozens of stars. That he saw not one constellation with which he was familiar did not unsettle him—he felt at peace, perhaps even at home. If familiarity bred contempt, Alucard’s fellow contestants were in no danger of his resentment. He had made little effort to familiarize himself with his potential opponents, and the majority of them had reciprocated in kind. Alucard was glad of the solitude. In his life, he had been close with another only once, and the pain of her loss still haunted his sleep. He had watched as time ravaged and eventually consumed his beloved Sonia, a torment for his caprice. Of course, the son of Dracula had studied the human mythology and had heard the story of Oisin. The idea that immortality could be a curse was as old as the understanding of death itself; but he had been young and foolish, and thought humanity could know nothing of the gift he was given since they were not. He paid dearly. In this world, a fighter’s lifetime was best measured in days or, for the skilled, weeks. To befriend other contestants served only to dull one’s competitive edge, and here that could mean the difference between life and death. Mario and Mega Man tried to keep their chins up, but Alucard had seen that they dwelt all too often on constant companions from whom they were now separated. Sonic and now Cloud also mourned the loss of friends, though they would never admit it. Even Tommy Vercetti seemed subdued of late. And then there were Link and Ryu, whose descent into madness provided the example most chilling of all. Alucard had always been intent on preventing himself from being at any such disadvantage. The door to the ‘Haunt burst open suddenly, slamming against the wall behind it with a sharp report. A short figure charged through it and stopped abruptly. Alucard did not even turn his head. That he heard no shortness of breath from his visitor, despite the obvious haste with which the visitor seemed to have been conducting a search, left few options as to his identity. The heavy footfalls ruled out all but one. Each of us unique, each gifted—or damned—by a different hand under a different sky. How strange that we can converse as easily as neighbors. Stranger still that we can know each other’s minds, be we made of flesh and blood or cogs and flywheels. “Alucard!” shouted Mega Man. The vampire still gave no hint that he acknowledged the robot’s presence. The blue bomber, like most sentient beings, was still ill at ease in Alucard’s presence. The two had not gotten off to the best of starts, a result of the half-vampire’s performance in his first-round victory over another android. Mega Man would be forced to admit, however, that he too misjudged Bomberman when they first met. Alucard had since proven himself to be better than the monster he had seemed back then, but Mega Man still couldn’t count the vampire among the “good guys,” as he thought of them. He saw Dracula’s son as icy, aloof, perhaps even heartless: the type of man who would describe his own amorality as acting unfettered by morals. Tonight, however, just about anything short of Dr. Wily would be the lesser of two evils. Alucard lifted his glass, sipping at its contents slowly. The robot wished he had not noticed the liquid’s dull red glow as it caught the candlelight. Mega Man tried again. “You’re gonna be late for your match!” It was true; the 8:00 deadline had already come and gone. Mega Man stepped closer, relieved to find nothing left on the plate sitting before Alucard. Sometimes, it was best to leave such matters to the imagination. “You can’t forfeit!” Finally, he had evoked some form of reaction. The vampire turned to look at him, arching one eyebrow. Mega Man opened his mouth to further plead his case, but Alucard spoke first. “He will wait.” Mega Man was unsure how to respond to that. By all state-of-the-art vocal pattern analyses, the vampire was dead certain. “Huh?” Alucard drank another mouthful before elaborating. “All he need do is claim victory now, and it is his. Has he done so?” The blue bomber was still confused. “Sephiroth? Well, no. I mean, I guess not.” He looked out the window. There was still no sign of life outside the bar; not even a breeze blew across the grass. “Nobody’s coming back yet.” Alucard nodded. In the unnerving flicker of the candlelight, Alucard’s eyes seemed to dart back and forth, even as his gaze bored unerringly into the far wall of the bar. It gave Mega Man the impression of a gang ringleader signaling to his shadowy cohorts lurking everywhere the fire’s faint glow could not reach. “But you said it yourself: all he’s gotta do is say so, and he moves on without a fight!” Alucard still seemed unmoved. “You think I don’t care,” he remarked dryly. Mega Man had nothing to say. Somehow, “yes,” seemed blunt and stupid, but anything else would be a lie. The half-vampire shifted in his seat, and the illusion in his pupils was gone. “You think his limitless ambition, his lust for dominion, the lives of you and the others are no concern of mine.” Typical. Very… human… of you. The vampire stared straight at Mega Man, continuing, “You are too quick to judge me. I am no coward. My father… all I inherited from him was his blood.” Alucard drained his glass, leaving only a faint reddish trail along the side. He swallowed slowly, savoring the taste in an evident manner. The only thing that kept Mega Man from shuddering was his physical inability to. “And the rest of it, I spilt for just such evils.” Mega Man was shocked, trying to reconcile his perception of the man with what was surely the most Alucard had ever told anyone not of his own world. Alucard, a defender of the downtrodden? But a patricide! A protector of the free will of the innocent? He was so cold and impersonal, even now! By all appearances, he was just another self-indulgent gladiator out for personal glory and the thrill of victory. “But… but…” Mega Man stammered. Something still didn’t add up. “Then why aren’t you challenging Sephiroth right now?” “As I said, he will wait.” Again, a pause. Mega Man was still not convinced. “It would not be fitting for a god to rise to power by forfeit.” “God? Fitting? He’s just out to kill everybody!” “No. Listen to him, and do not fear, Mega Man.” Alucard rose from his seat, his head disappearing into the darkness outside the candlelight as he spoke. Mega Man could now see that the vampire had girded on an impressive array of weaponry. What had previously seemed a gold-trimmed black vest was now revealed by the light to be finely-wrought chainmail, countless tiny metal rings blacker than the night behind him. Though a frilled collar emerged from behind the armor near Alucard’s neck, the vampire was plainly a man dressed not for dinner, but for war. “Fear is his weapon, and he must kill to keep it sharp—that blade loses its edge quickly. He is no mere madman, though he believes he is God. He wants slaves, not corpses. Our lives are in danger, but theirs”—Alucard waved a hand in the direction of the window framing the pair’s view of the stadium—“are not. Merely their freedom. He needs them to see he is different, better.” And like Caesar on the Senate floor, this self-proclaimed god shall fall in his own temple. “You mean like the way you always get around by turning into bats.” It was Alucard’s turn to be caught off-guard as Mega Man interrupted his train of thought. The blue bomber understood now. It didn’t help matters much—devious tyrant or murderous lunatic, Sephiroth was a threat to everyone and everything. A very real and serious threat, as he had come to discover last year. But perhaps tonight his arrogance would be his undoing. There was more to Alucard than met the photo-sensor, that was for sure, and Mega Man wondered just how much of him a self-absorbed megalomaniac would have looked deep enough to see. The silver-haired fighter turned back to the table, lifting a green glass bottle from its place hidden in shadow. “My praise to the barman and the vintner, if I do not return to give it myself.” Mega Man heaved a sigh of relief. Alucard brushed past Mega Man’s diminutive blue form and strode out the door into the night, headed for the arena. His black cloak hardly made a sound as his quiet, measured footfalls faded softly into the distance. "Nightwalkers" The stadium stood in the moonlight, its seating area a ring of activity only notable in contrast to its surroundings. Outside its stony walls, all was still. As far as the eye could see from atop the highest seat of the arena field and forest seemed frozen, as if not a blade of grass was turned by a faint breeze. Even in the contestants’ compound, where some sign of life could be spotted during the most heated of matches, nothing moved. A few pale lights flickered briefly in their futile fight against the night. It was as if the world itself was waiting in anticipation of a battle it, too, knew would come. Within the ring of stone, the tension had started to break. Spectators shuffled and muttered. A few had risen to their feet and already begun making their way to the exit, displeased with what seemed to be the first cancelled match in the tournament’s history. Most, however, still sat, there having been no formal announcement of a forfeit. Murmurs coursed through the stands with hardly a voice behind them, the sort of respectful whispers one uses on instinct when in a sacred place. Inside the stone circle, on a featureless tiled floor at the central focus of that temple, stood their idol. Seemingly cut from black and white marble, Sephiroth had stood there in statuesque tranquility since sunset. No one had seen him enter; the first into their seats had simply found him there, arms crossed and chin raised, eyes closed yet still somehow staring at the first star to reveal itself in the evening sky just above the eastern arena wall. His unmoving form was more a part of the desolate still landscape within the arena than any tree or building was of that without. The crowd gave a collective gasping start as a door slammed metallically at the edge of the enclosure. The report served as an unnerving reminder of how reverently quiet they had unconsciously restrained themselves to be before. Alucard entered the arena, his black cape flowing just enough behind him to hint at the deep red inner lining. To the fans not seated nearest the floor, the scene was that of a man inspecting a statue of himself. Alucard’s boots clicked audibly on the tiled surface of the battleground, echoing in the now complete silence. Alucard’s acceptance when offered entry to this tournament had nothing to do with the quixotic heroism Mega Man now looked for in him. Where he was from, he was a pariah, a role he had forced upon himself. To obey his mother’s dying wish and leave humanity at peace, he could not risk the propagation of the bloodline of his father, the dread Count Dracula. Having a child by Sonia Belmont had infected the legendary vampire-hunting family with a sickness that manifested itself in the weak will and corruptibility of their descendant, Richter. As the price for a moment’s pleasure, Dracula had nearly returned to enslave mankind. To hide himself from their view was Alucard’s only option to prevent such a disaster from occurring again. This tournament offered a chance to maintain his skills without risking contact with another of his world. Here, he could again walk under the sky, and see the ocean. Here he could try his blade against true opponents; all without breaking his eternal rest in his homeland lost to the world, waiting in silence and solitude for a death that could never come. And if the dictates of the tournament pitted him against one so like his father in method and in mind, so much the better. Many of the fans still stared at that unmoving man in the center of the ring, waiting for a hint of movement beneath the black cloak and silver mane of hair. None came. One pair of eyes, masked behind multi-thousand-dollar binoculars, had no interest in a twitch to prove the figure human. Solid Snake was examining Sephiroth’s stomach. Perhaps it was a trick of the shadows. Perhaps it was something hanging from the inside of his cloak. But that strange line Snake’s expert eye had noted between the folds of black fabric certainly looked like a scar. Neither of the SOLDIER’s previous opponents had used a weapon that could leave a mark like that. This was a clean stroke, not a serrated gash and certainly not a bullet wound. Where had it come from? Snake stroked his beard thoughtfully and kept his suspicions to himself. At length, the statue spoke. “So at last you deign to grace us with your presence, nightwalker.” The “nightwalker” stopped at a distance of ten paces from his foe. Alucard, whose vampire half sensed such things as easily as a shark, could tell there was a faint trace of something on Sephiroth’s forehead. None of the others could have noticed its presence, there was so little as to be invisible to the naked eye. It was blood, of course, and not the swordsman’s own. It couldn’t have been more than a day old… and it was human. This had been planted there for Alucard’s attuned senses only. He left it there as if to bait me, like I was some animal, all the while knowing it means nothing to me. He makes my eyes as well as my ears endure his insults. Everything Sephiroth did, from his condescending demeanor to that epithet he used, and now this, dripped with venomous disrespect for the vampire. “Nightwalker”—the sort of name a terrified peasant who had seen nothing and heard only legends would use when referring to Alucard’s father. He would have me believe that to him, I am no more than some base bogeyman that preys on lovelorn milkmaids caught on provincial roads after dark. The only response of Dracula’s son to the sneering welcome of Jenova’s was to draw his blade. This was not the basket-hilted longsword bearing his name with which he had dueled Kirby in his previous match. The weapon he held was curved with a broader blade, its polished flat etched with strange markings that glowed pale blue in the darkness. Rather than charge his foe, Alucard brought his arm back, and with a wide sidearm swing and a flick of the wrist, flung the sword toward Sephiroth. At the last moment possible, the SOLDIER’s shining eyes flicked open and he spun his body sideways. The rune sword whirled past him like a razor-edged discus, shimmering blue in the poor light. Sephiroth stared at Alucard, who oddly made no move to close the distance between the pair or draw another weapon. Snapping his fingers, Sephiroth’s smirking lips formed the word “ice” soundlessly. The air turned frigid around Alucard, white crystals beginning to close in around his body. The magical sheets of ice sealed around his torso. There was a high pitched crack and a momentary hiss. An outer icy sheath shattered and fell to the ground, revealing the last of the frost within melting away everywhere it came in contact with the vampire’s pitch-black mail shirt. Not a white flake remained on his body. Sephiroth had realized why his opponent had made no move to continue the assault. Like a falcon’s wing through the air, the spinning rune-marked sword gave only the slightest of warning sounds before it struck, returning from behind the black-cloaked swordsman. As his spell melted into ineffectual nothingness, Sephiroth’s left hand reached behind him. “Don’t hold back, nightwalker,” he said, his fingers snapping shut. The SOLDIER brought his hand from behind his body, showing Alucard the rune sword he had plucked from the air by the hilt. The slit-eyed smirk that had by now become familiar to everyone in the stands flashed across his face as he continued, “It is better to die fighting”—here he flung Alucard’s blade to the ground edge-on for emphasis—“than screaming like that abomination you called your brother.” The rune sword quivered to a rest standing on end with a melodious hum, its tip buried an inch into the stone tile of the arena floor. Alucard had never called Raziel brother. The two white-haired swordsmen stood apart from one another, each ready to act but awaiting the other’s first move. Though neither had drawn his sword, any witness would describe the pair as fencing. “You asked me that day if I saw the fate of myself and all my kindred in his death,” Alucard called out into the dead silence, loud enough for all to hear. The half-vampire’s hands were at his waist, gripping hilt and scabbard of another of the weapons hanging from his belt. “I saw only his. I saw also the fate of a common man who could see through your lies.” The corner of Sephiroth’s mouth twitched slightly as he raised his hand to the sword slung across his back. One eyebrow flicked upward in a mixture of bemused curiosity and genuine anger. Alucard spoke with the leaden gravity of accusation: “You could not kill him.” Sephiroth chose this moment to strike. To everyone in the stadium, it seemed that the reminder of Payne’s escape had provoked him into attacking. Perhaps even his opponent would make the same fatal error in judgement. The SOLDIER lunged forward, bringing his blade high over his head in an arcing downward slash. At the apex of the swing, with the curved blade pointing skyward, his free arm rose to complete the two-handed grip without the faintest pause in the smooth motion. Downward toward the son of Dracula fell the Masamune, sword by which Sephiroth had become famous once long ago. Speared on its considerable length two in his universe had lost their lives; nearly a third who now sat watching grimly. That total had been matched already here in the world he called Porta Dei. Starlight, reflected in the silvery surface of the blade, cast dozens of white pinpoints on the ground that streaked to each side as the blade sliced downward. The tiny reflected stars came to an abrupt halt with the sound of the clash of metal. With two hands high above his head, Alucard held his own lengthy blade curved down across his body to block his enemy’s blow. In contrast to the polished silver, the vampire’s blade glinted under the moonlight with a metallic red-brown hue. Muramasa, it was called—the sword that craved blood. The two fighters stood almost far enough apart that one could lay, arms outstretched, between their feet. Their blades slid away from contact with a steely ring, each beginning its next strike across that wide distance. For an instant both swordsmen were looking into a mirror, each facing down a dispassionate black-cloaked killer whose long white hair waved in the windless air, belying his next attack. Alucard broke the illusion. As the silver sword of his foe came slicing down from a new angle, the vampire prince quickly ducked, contorting his body to allow his arms to continue driving his own bloodthirsty weapon upward toward Sephiroth’s unprotected abdomen. Masamune slashed down, leaving a thin cut in Alucard’s black cape and carving in a clean line through the finely-crafted armor shrouded beneath. Muramasa rose in a thrusting jab, tearing through Sephiroth’s dark garb to break the flesh beyond. The silver sword pierced nearly through the back of the vampire’s enchanted generations-old armor, leaving only a promise of the pain to come stinging dully behind the shoulders of the son of Dracula. In response, the tip of the red blade sunk into Sephiroth’s body. As if with a mind of its own, it was guided to the line of the scar left by Crono’s rainbow katana. Alucard ignored the passing pain on his back, lifting the blade upward as it traced the line of the day-old cut. The SOLDIER grunted in pain as the sword reopened the wound with ease, instinctively holding a hand to his gut. As Alucard rose to his feet completing his stroke, Sephiroth pulled his hand away in shock—it was dry. Where Muramasa had slashed the wound open, it had drained it ravenously. Only now was the cut again beginning to bleed. Spreading down from the tip of the thirsting blade like a stain in cloth was the half-human, half-alien blood drawn from Jenova’s son. The stain spread ever thinner along the length of the Muramasa, fading to match its bloody coloration as if being absorbed. Sephiroth stared at the sword and its wielder with disbelieving curiosity. It was Alucard who smirked now as he pressed the attack, pushing closer to his foe. The red sword, now with a taste for the other warrior’s blood, whirled at blinding speeds in arcs before the vampire prince. Each crimson flashing stroke was more narrowly evaded as his quarry backed away, readying his long blade for defense. Suddenly Sephiroth lashed out, the Masamune leaping up from the tile on which it had been dragged and flashing brightly into the center of the whirling storm of the bloody blade’s attack. There was the shrill cracking ring of metal strained beyond its limit. Sparkling shards exploded into the air between the two silver-maned swordsmen. Sephiroth followed through with his slash. The Masamune, finest sword ever made in his universe, was still whole, the impressive length of its blade flecked with red. Muramasa had been unable to take the force of clashing with the perfectly tempered silver blade at its own speed of attack. In his hand, Alucard held the hilt and first few inches of the blood-red weapon. He watched the severed blade of the sword spin away to his side, leaving a showering red trail. Behind and beneath the broken sword’s arcing path the Masamune whistled through the night air, Sephiroth’s follow-through carrying him full circle to slash again at the now-defenseless vampire. The weapon shone in the moonlight briefly before carving into Alucard’s leg, notching the bone. As the vampire sank to his knees, the blade of the Muramasa clattered against the stone tile well beyond arm’s reach. It left a faint ruddy smear of a trail as it skidded to a halt, thick red liquid oozing from the jagged break. Alucard dropped the haft, clutching his thigh where Sephiroth’s attack had split it open. The crowd around the pair roared tumultuously, but Alucard saw and heard only the would-be ruler of this world as he paced closer to stand over him. He held his reddened torso in obvious pain but flaunted, as he always did in such moments, his supercilious shark-like smile. “I told you once that we were alike, nightwalker,” Sephiroth sneered. “And that you were worthy of my attention before today.” He paused dramatically, ignoring the crowd’s confusion at this delay. “How wrong I was.” As he almost offhandedly spoke this, the SOLDIER pulled his weapon from Alucard’s leg. The son of Dracula hissed with the pain, but did not break his stare. He reassumed his grip on the wound. “True, we are both better than those around us,” he said. “We are both given power. But we are as different from each other as we are from them.” Sephiroth waved his sword dismissively with one hand toward a particularly densely packed section of the stands. He lowered his voice to a thin whisper. “You see your strength, yet choose to live in servitude to helpless worms for your own self-righteous ends. I choose to make use of what I am given.” Then, louder, “No power is without purpose, Adrian.” Adrian. No one called him by that name, except… “F…fath…” stammered Alucard. It was too perfect. The use of his given name, the haughty lecture—so sure was Sephiroth of his manipulative ploys that he could never have conceived of his victim playing along with them to bait him. When Sephiroth had drawn the Masamune out of Alucard’s leg, the vampire had been forced to retract his hand. As he had reached back to massage the cut, his fingers had crept lower, into the cuff of his knee-high boot, his leg crumpled under him. Tucked in the soft jet lining was a handle, which his fingers found with little trouble. Now Sephiroth leaned over him, awaiting the word whispered that would prove his conquest of the half-vampire’s mind. Alucard’s blood-slicked hand tightened around the ornate handle of the knife used centuries ago as a ceremonial tool by the Baron von Holbein. Its functionality was in no way diminished by its age or intended use. “Fa…” mumbled Alucard one final time. Then, with one swift jerking motion, he drew the dagger from his boot and spun it to point the shining gold-inlaid blade upward at the SOLDIER’s face as he stabbed. Sephiroth’s head snapped back, eyes wide in genuine shock. He reacted just in time to avoid the impalement of his silver tongue through the soft palette behind his outthrust chin. Instead the dagger left a red scratch along his neck and cut a deep hook-shaped gash into his face from jaw to cheekbone. Sephiroth staggered back with a yell, holding his face, suddenly thrown back into the fight. His other hand dropped his legendary sword to the stone floor with a subtle metallic ringing, opting instead for a magical counterstrike. The fingers snapped, and a brilliant thunderbolt split the cloudless night sky. Alucard still held the sharp steel-and-gold dagger aloft from his surprise strike, and lightning is drawn to nothing so much as such a metal spike in an otherwise flat open space. Alucard’s arm erupted in an agonizing mixture of stabbing pain and numbness. The centuries-old enchanted mail which he wore prevented the rest of his body from serving as the blinding charge’s conductor, but below the bottom of its sleeves it could offer little protection. At the gold and black edge of the vampire’s armor, the blue-white bolt emerged again into the air, arcing to the ground near his feet. From his hand to his upper forearm, Alucard’s white frilled shirt burned away. His pallid flesh was blackened and steaming in spots as it twitched uncontrollably. The dagger dropped to the tiles. The stunned vampire prince had fallen back to a safe distance, allowing Sephiroth to reach down and retrieve the sword only he could swing. With his good arm, Alucard unslung the shield bearing his personal heraldic blazon. “Call me nightwalker, murderer,” commanded the son of Dracula. Sephiroth looked up to see the bared vampiric fangs of a silvery wolf-like creature with the wings of a bat. The fantasy monster shone in raised relief on a white background with a blood-red cross in the pale light. Across the insignia’s wings it bore a long silvered notch where it had stopped, but only barely, the SOLDIER’s initial attack. Alucard’s arctic gaze over the top of the knife-edged shield was locked on the bloody trace that still lingered on Sephiroth’s forehead. “When I told you to expect no compassion from me, did you truly believe I meant only toward you?” answered Sephiroth, still snide and patronizing. “Perhaps a life of servitude is best for you.” He kicked aside the Holbein dagger, listening to it skitter to a stop near the circumferential wall. “After all, the son of a parent as proud as yours could never hope to measure up.” “You are the voice of experience, I suppose it would be foolish to doubt you,” Alucard retorted, his voice even and emotionless. Sephiroth swung his lengthy blade across in front of him with one hand, in challenge. He beckoned Alucard with his free hand mockingly. The vampire closed his eyes in concentration and waved his hand behind the shield. A quartet of misty clouds rose from the parched dry surface of the stadium floor at his feet. Alucard’s outstretched arm bade them float toward Sephiroth. The wisps closed on the SOLDIER, gaining form as they gained speed. The things had malevolent staring eyes now, and groping bony hands made of smoke and shadow. With skeletal grins on their half-formed faces they sped for him as one, and he simply laughed. “Very good. Show me your power.” He swung the Masamune back, reversing the swipe he had taken moments ago. The blade was custom-made for him, the balance suited uniquely to his body. As such, it carried with it an extension of his aura, dividing the assailing clouds with an icy mystical refusal to believe in anything not of his own imagining. The four spirits split into eight miniature pieces, each misty puff dissipating into the dry night air with a silent scream of terror on its fading face. Yet from behind their foggy screen a razor edge swung at Sephiroth with the clear intention of beheading him. Alucard had closed with his foe behind the spirit host he had summoned and now swung his family shield, its edge honed to weapon-quality sharpness. Sephiroth dodged backward as the vampire’s shield whistled by, near enough to see into the eyes of the fearsome creature snarling on its face. He raised his sword up to counter a second swipe from Alucard only to find none coming. The half-vampire warrior had disappeared into thin air. The SOLDIER spun around, correctly expecting an attack from behind. With a ripple in the air not unlike that caused by intense heat, the black-clad figure burst back into being. Alucard drew his cape back with his shield-arm, exposing the rich red interior, illuminated by three blazing balls of flame. Immediately, Sephiroth lashed out with his sword, lunging forward and extending his arms fully. Alucard had intended to transport himself out of reach of the aspiring ruler’s attack, but his judgement of the distance had been short. As the vampire prince’s arm stretched out to loose his conflagration on his enemy, the tip of the Masamune slid along its length. Skin, flesh, fabric, and the leather straps by which Alucard held his shield were all sheared with ease. The shield hit the earthen tile with a startling bang, spattered by blood from an open wound that stretched the length and breadth of Alucard’s forearm. He winced and retracted his arm as the flaming orbs burst from within his cape, causing them to fly off in wild trajectories. One exploded against the ground between the two competitors with a roaring blast, lighting their wounded bodies briefly in shades of blood-red and orange. The other two whirled upward, one bursting against the stadium’s unseen protective barriers only feet from a screaming group of onlookers. Alucard was in pain, and knew himself to be in danger of a swift and inescapable death speared by the Masamune. With the renewed vigor of desperation, he drew a new weapon and dove forward as Sephiroth’s swipe hummed to a stop. The sword Alucard pulled from his belt was called Gurthang, and its sturdy wide blade sparkled only dully by starlight. From its tip to its hilt, the edge of the broadsword ran with an endless supply of blood, black in the nocturnal lighting. It was said the sword bled a drop for every creature that had met its end by the sword’s edge. The red-black liquid dripped to the rock floor, its spray describing a straight line as Alucard thrust the fell weapon forward at his opponent’s body. The son of Jenova was shocked at the speed with which his tiring opponent was able to mount his latest attack. Again he tried to dodge the blow, but he was too late. With his carved and blood-reddened arm, Alucard stabbed the tip of his oozing blade into the side of the former SOLDIER commander. The wound opened in Sephiroth’s side, staining Gurthang with yet more deep red blood. A trail of the freshly-spilt liquid wormed its way up the blade, defying gravity with gruesome purpose. Where it met the dripping trail along the blade’s edge, the paths joined into a red stream, coursing over the hilt and hand of the weapon’s bearer. The bloody rivulets flowed over Alucard’s forearm, seeping into the raw red wound left there by the edge of the Masamune. Nature’s flow had been reversed as the vampire’s wound absorbed blood from the sword, stealing from his victim the life-sustaining fluid he had lost. Sephiroth had recovered from the initial pain of yet another wound, but made no apparent attempt to counter his foe. Instead his head was thrown back, his arms outstretched to the sides, lips moving soundlessly. With an eerily slow tilt of the head, he brought the flaxen-haired vampire back into his vision. Staring as intensely as if to see through him, Sephiroth whispered, “Do you see who rides on the pale horse? He comes for you as for your mother: too soon, yet far too late.” As the enchanted words washed over him, Alucard’s vision swam, spun, and blurred, the cheers of the fans distorting until they became the roar of a bonfire. Alucard stood in a crowded city street, staring in horror at what had drawn the attention of the chanting crowd. Their words were unintelligible, but their meaning was clear: “Burn!” Tied to a stake and twisting futilely was his mother, Lisa, just as he remembered her. At her feet, oil-doused wood was packed densely. At its edges, the pyre had already been set ablaze. A tall, faceless man lifted his torch with a triumphant yell and threw it at her feet. Lisa screamed, writhing away from the flame that leapt up to consume her. Her pleading eyes fixed on Alucard. She was trying to say something, but he could not hear. The crowd was chanting for her demise, watching with glee as the tears on her cheeks steamed away. Alucard’s vision slipped aside, torn away from the raging fire. The man beside him had a sword at his belt. Alucard grabbed the exposed grip and wrenched it free. There was another man behind him, carrying a torch. He looked up, hearing more screams, and saw the flames dancing in the shape of a woman. In the corner of his vision, across the ring of fire, a man in black seemed to nod before turning his back and walking away into the smoke. Alucard drove the weapon in his hand backward under his arm, skewering the last of the torchbearers… and howled in pain and rage as he snapped back to reality, pitching forward to the tiled stone floor of an arena, his own hand driving his sword into his side. Sephiroth had grunted at the sharp rip when the vampire had pulled the dripping sword from his side, but his mental assault had been successful. With his quivering left hand the aspiring god clutched a shining silver sphere to his bleeding stomach, white-knuckled. The deep gashes were beginning to close. His heart-sinking smile had returned as he backpedaled to a safe distance watching the wide-eyed half-vampire stagger to his feet. Sephiroth’s right hand waved through the air, starting with his palm open to the ground and ending with it before him end on and open as if in a broken gesture of prayer. From his lips, came a demand at the edge of audibility, slowly and with authority. “Ascend, Heartless Angel.” The stadium floor blazed to a white brilliance in a ring around the vampire’s feet, cutting into the night sky like daybreak. Specks of blinding light rose from the ring, spiraling around Alucard and swirling in his vision. Simply to look at them induced in him the weakness and nausea of sunlight’s hateful glare, but they were everywhere. Shutting his eyes did nothing to alleviate the torture, nor did focusing on his foe’s mocking laughter. The lights coalesced before him as he stumbled toward Sephiroth, joining in a fearsome blinding ball. The light drove through his chest, passing through his enchanted armor as easily as if it were air. The impact had no physical force. The pain was gone, but the effects were devastating. Alucard could barely keep his feet. He had been robbed of all his strength, nearly helpless as his enemy stood and gloated. “That was true power. Do you even know what you refuse yourself?” Alucard would need once again to steal energy from his opponent, who careful observation would reveal was also flagging. The vampire drew from his belt his last blade, one which he had avoided until now for its inability to match the Masamune’s reach. He desperately needed blood now, and this weapon’s ability to draw it was unparalleled. The sword he pulled from its sheath glowed white from within, a ghostly trail chasing its every swipe. Sephiroth scoffed disdainfully, then realized his mistake as Alucard began to swing his weapon. True, it did not reach far, but it seemed to be everywhere about him at once. The blade and its three ghostly echoes whirled about him high and low, behind and before, defying any to step within its reach. Alucard dashed toward his foe, preparing make every inch of his body bleed. The SOLDIER commander brandished his weapon and stepped back. His opponent was drained nearly to collapse. How could he keep this assault up? Crissaegrim whirled in the darkness, but it was only to serve initially as a defense. Alucard stopped suddenly within its deadly razor-edged tornado. His eyes closed, and he opened his mouth, baring his vampiric fangs in a terrifying yawn. His skin went red as he willed the slicked blood on his victim’s torso and face to him. When he had fed on that, the slashing charge would open countless new wounds from which to drink. Not a drop would move. A red trail crept down Sephiroth’s cheek from the dagger wound, oblivious to Alucard’s will. Sephiroth’s attack had drained him of spiritual energy even more completely than physical energy. The vampire prince’s foe stared smirking as Crissaegrim’s ghostly dervish’s whirl slowed to a halt. The sword hung as uselessly by Alucard’s side as his charred arm. Alucard’s temptation to fall to his knees was great, but he would not let himself. The two half-breeds, sons of Dracula and Jenova, stared at each other knowing there was only one end left possible. A thought crept into Alucard’s mind unbidden as he stared at his own demise slicing toward him. He had, after all, desired nothing as much as an end to his bloodline. Was I hoping all along to die here? He had hoped to challenge the best warriors the tournament could offer. Now he found some strange ironic solace in the fact that there was hope he had not faced the best before his failure. Sephiroth spoke again as he swung his blade, though the words came laboriously. “You… can never… save her.” - - - Alucard’s head rolled to a rest near the inscribed blade spiked into the ground at the match’s outset. The long white hair, now dyed with blood, unfurled beneath it like a red carpet. By the light of the moon, the blue etched runes on the sword could now be read. They spelled a single word. VERBOTEN Sephiroth kicked the blade idly, dislodging it from the stone and sending it sliding into the shadows. Screams from the stands had died down, but the cheers would continue to echo loudly within the stone ring. He made his way to the center of the arena, gritting his teeth beneath closed lips at the pain. Clutching the pale silvery emerald hidden within his fist, he came to a stop. His eyes closed; his arms crossed. The floor of the temple was flecked and spattered with blood. The idol stood once more in its central place, similarly reddened, but the signs of its desecration were already beginning to fade. All was again as still within as without, and the worshippers rejoiced loudly. Carrying above the din, the loudest voice was a whisper. The night above him, to which he had again turned his lidded gaze, still spoke. It welcomed with arms spread ever wider the one-winged angel, master of Porta Dei. "Gate of the Gods" Where was he going? Sephiroth had remained on the arena floor until the last of the spectators, exuberant at their favorite fighter’s victory or trapped behind the slow-moving throng trying to file out of the coliseum, had evacuated its stands and disappeared into the night bound for whatever places they called home. He was intent on maintaining the illusion of his permanence, and showing to all who would look how easily he shrugged off the efforts of all challengers. Even wounds of the severity he had sustained that night. The image was powerful and stirring, particularly to those who did not recognize how much of his performance was just for show. By the time the final straggling members of that herd of onlookers had left the stadium, only scars were visible where Alucard’s weapons had left bleeding gashes less than two hours before. Healed and victorious, Sephiroth had spent no time alone with the stars. As soon as there were none to see, the swordsman had left the battleground at a run, his path leading over the hills and into the forest north of the arena. A lone figure had tarried just beyond the wall of the giant proving ground, hidden from conventional view in the stone arch of one of its many entryways. Samus Aran had waited in that alcove since she left the stadium, monitoring the night’s winner in the surreal purplish shades of her thermal imaging through the intervening obstacles. Samus had watched Sephiroth’s performance that night with disgust, her stomach turning more with every raucous cheer the megalomaniacal fighter had received. She knew all too well the kind of being that would slaughter another simply to intimidate the weak-willed. Whether the victim was one man or a planet’s worth of them, this butchery was nothing short of monstrous. The parallels Samus could draw between Sephiroth and the pirates whose genocidal ruin of human and Chozo colonies had served as backdrop to her youth would have driven most to blind, hateful rage. In Samus, it fostered only a steely determination to ensure the swordsman’s plans did not come to fruition. With utmost patience she had waited, stock still in the night, until he was alone. As she had started to re-enter the arena, she was taken aback to see his glowing image spring into action, rushing out of the enclosure and into the woods. There was no mystery as to the source of Sephiroth’s supernatural healing. The chaos emerald which he had held clamped in his fist following the match appeared to the naked eye as a sparkling gray-white stone. He had taken pains to conceal it from view of those watching, but Samus’ enhanced visual display rendered that effort pointless. In the X-ray spectrum the jewel was a dazzling spherical beacon. Switching to her X-ray scanning visor, the bounty hunter followed that gleaming indicator of the swordsman’s presence as he sped among the trees. Samus had expected the result of the night’s match beforehand. Her particular revulsion was centered tonight on what she had noticed as she sat in the stands prior to the match. Her helmet’s Chozo-built scanning equipment was sensitive to substance concentrations far smaller than those human senses could detect. And as she had examined the black-clad warrior as he stood communing with the sky, her scanner had picked up a faint trace of blood on his forehead. It was a day old, human, and showed none of the anomalous spectral characteristics of Sephiroth’s alien blood. He had either fought someone the previous night, or had been close to others fighting. Samus knew which option her money was on. She was careful to keep a fair distance between herself and Sephiroth as she pursued. No one was more aware than she of the accuracy of Snake’s dismissal of her suit’s capability for stealth when the two were escaping Bowser’s Doom Ship. Samus made a mental note to thank her birdlike gods for giving the chaos emerald a high-frequency signal that could be detected from space. She wondered, as she jogged in long strides over the forest floor, what destination her quarry was headed for in such a rush. She had not followed Sephiroth long before he slowed to a walk, approaching under cover of the trees and of darkness a small nondescript building. She recognized the place, but why would he come here? Samus also slowed, switching back to thermal vision and raising the sound amplification of her helmet to investigate the SOLDIER’s actions. There was another man outside the building, shorter than Sephiroth and stockier. He seemed to be carrying something, but its identity was impossible to discern by thermal imaging or the night’s natural poor lighting. The unidentified man had left the huge double-doors, out of place in the extreme on the tiny structure, gaping open. Each was propped by a crate taken from a stack piled against the building’s outer wall. Through them, Samus could see parts of two or three of what looked to be a bank of circular frames mounted on the far wall. The interior was illuminated by a harsh fluorescent light. One of the frames surrounded a whirling blue-black vortex that seemed as deep as an ocean. The portal room. Samus crept a few steps closer, so intent on her own silence that every noise she heard from the building before her seemed deafening. Sephiroth strode out from the treeline. - - - The serviceman spun around at the rustle in the brush. At first, he could only see the shape of a man approaching. “Who are you?” Sephiroth stepped further into the light pouring out of the open doors to the portal building without breaking his stride. The serviceman could now see what he faced. His stare went wide in fright. All of the support personnel were trained before setting foot on the site to be wary of a certain selection of the contestants. Still, all contest compound personnel were protected by the same clause as contestants themselves—harming them was punishable by permanent expulsion. The thought did little to comfort the serviceman, who now found himself alone in the portal room in the dead of night with one of the top faces on that watch list. “W-What are you doin’ here?” he finally found the courage to ask. “As you may know,” began Sephiroth with no hint of anything but civility, “I was victorious in my match today.” The SOLDIER scanned the room quickly before settling his piercing gaze once more on the other man. “My opponent was wearing a ring. Could I see it?” The serviceman could not make eye contact. He shuffled nervously toward the opened portal, holding the package he was carrying away from him strangely. “Um… sorry, chief… we just sent that body back. With everything he was wearin’.” He stood within arm’s reach of the portal. Sephiroth’s jaw clenched. His stare was suddenly harsh and flinty. “And that is the head.” “Y-yes…” the shorter man muttered, turning his gaze for a second to the vortex behind him. “Give it to me,” Sephiroth commanded in even tones. “A tooth will do.” He was too late. The other man had already tossed Alucard’s head into the swirling portal, sending it back to the world from which it came. The serviceman now stared at Sephiroth in fear. Had he known he was going against the warrior’s will, he would never have dared perform his duty. Unwittingly, he had thwarted the scheming SOLDIER, and now stammered stupidly at his own act. “Y-you can see if a t-tooth… fell out… you can have it… you can have my ring… if you want it…” “Blundering fool,” cut in Sephiroth. His words were frigid, low and threatening. “I would sooner take your rib, or your eye. Or your heart. Because of you, he”—he pointed at the gaping portal—“will rise again.” Sephiroth’s hand went to his sword to make the threat real, though he was far cleverer than to execute it. “Run.” The serviceman, white as a sheet, did as he was told. Sephiroth paced slowly out of the wide doors, dwarfed by the opening designed to accommodate the likes of hammer-swinging demons, dragon tanks, and giant fire-breathing turtles. He stopped at the forest eave. So the half-breed vampire prince will return. By that time, it should be no matter. “Show yourself,” commanded Sephiroth, staring straight at Samus through the dense undergrowth. Samus made no move, kneeling in the brush. How could he have seen her? “Very well,” he said almost resignedly. Sephiroth then vanished. There was a sudden, jarring sound of human fingers snapping, amplified well beyond its natural level, in Samus’ ear. She reached up with her hand to lower the amplification level in her suit’s sensors and tried to leap to her feet. She could not budge. The feet, legs, gun-arm, and lower torso of her suit were encased in a huge block of magically created ice, shimmering incongruously in the warm summer night air. She was frozen in a crouching position, practically immobilized. Sephiroth walked into her vision slowly from behind her. He gazed down at her from time to time, almost pityingly. His hand did not stray from the hilt of his sword, threatening the obvious response to any sudden action on Samus’ part. At length, he spoke. “Why did you follow me?” Samus answered with a question of her own, as emotionless as the blank visor that stared back at him. “Whose blood is that on your face? Another random victim from the staff?” Sephiroth laughed scornfully, stopping to gaze down at Samus’ frozen form. “You don’t understand at all, do you? Why would I waste my time with them?” Samus’ heart sank. All of the remaining contestants were present today during the battle. That left only one option. Sephiroth may as well have confirmed it with his next sentence. “No, this one was much more like you: idealistic, inquisitive, and bent on revenge. That is why you have come here to challenge me, isn’t it?” It was more of a statement than a query. In truth, Samus had come to capture Sephiroth, force him to be held accountable for his crime. His disqualification would have been inescapable. Now she was frozen on the ground, helpless. She thought about Crono, how she had heard him talking about—or was it to?—Sephiroth during his match. She cursed herself for not seeing this coming. Samus doubted the rules of the tournament even covered such a situation. She could not respond. “Now you see: although you will not, for fear, you also cannot. Your challenge would be empty, as useless as a mountain climber’s screams while the avalanche bears down on her.” Samus had to repress a chuckle. She had stood toe-to-toe with this braggart a week less than a year ago, and they both knew it. Sephiroth raised a finger to his forehead. “The one whose blood this is was, unlike you, able to understand that. Dimly he may even have begun to, groping in the dark as is the wont of those born blind. “For all of the planets you have seen, no world you could ever know is like this one. This world,” he said, spreading his arms grandly, “this universe, has been crafted from its own pure energy. That same energy has opened breaches into all of our universes. Think of the power held in that tiny hut behind me! This is the Promised Land—the Gate of the Gods. And it is destined to open unto me.” Sephiroth laughed his humorless laugh again as Samus tried to fathom what that last sentence meant. “I saw your slinking comrade-in-myopia peering at my scar before. So if I give you the luxury of seeing him again, tell him that yes, the boy scratched me before I killed him.” Sephiroth drew his blade menacingly. “By the way, aren’t you forced to wonder why that dense serpent has let you come out here alone, abandoning you to the same fate?” “Freeze.” This new voice was sharp and gruff, cutting through Sephiroth’s boastful sneer. One of the crates not used to prop the portal room doors had grown legs, following the swordsman into the woods. The crate was quickly discarded into the bush, the man inside creeping up on the pair in total silence. Now he had emerged from his cover, a pistol held one-handed within inches of Sephiroth’s temple. In his other hand, Solid Snake held a miniature recording device with microphone and lens pointed at the swordsman as well. His gray attire still rendered him nearly invisible in the gloom. Samus did not let her relief stop her from seizing the opportunity to break free. In the fraction of a second as Sephiroth was caught off-guard, Samus fired her plasma beam into the block of ice that encased half of her body. There was a hiss, and she rose faster than the steam cloud released by her attack. Sephiroth lowered his sword with one hand. The other hung at his side. He turned to face Snake. “Remiss, weren’t you, to let him die without being there to watch how and hear why?” “I don’t know what you are,” Snake threatened, “and I don’t much care. But a bullet through the brain cares even less. I’ve got you on tape confessing to Crono’s murder, and threatening Samus. Now we’re all going to go take this to the authorities together.” Snake flicked a sidelong glance at Samus, whose beam was also trained on Sephiroth. “Sorry I couldn’t tell you I was coming along, but you’ve got a pretty obvious tell when you’ve got a good hole card. No offense, but I couldn’t have done this without you.” Sephiroth had a free hand, and a split second in which the opponent with the faster reactions had averted his gaze. It was all he needed. His long fingers snapped loudly. A nearby tree shuddered under the impact of a SOCOM bullet and another burst into red-hot plasma-induced flame as the two gunners fired at point-blank range at a target that was no longer there. Snake and Samus whirled around in opposite directions as one, sweeping the area for their quarry, but it was too late. Another snap resounded from behind them, and Solid Snake was encased in a block of solid ice. One hand protruded from the reflective surface, whitening as it clamped Snake’s recorder. Sephiroth spoke calmly as Samus trained her weapon on him. “Snake cannot breathe under there.” Samus shot another burst of searing plasma. It hurtled harmlessly into the underbrush. Sephiroth continued, again suddenly behind her. “Go on and fire, but do you think you can hit me before he dies?” She fired again, and lit another tree ablaze before which her enemy had stood an instant earlier. “It is a pity you won’t hear his choking gasps, sealed away as he is. Then again, you don’t even remember your own parents dying screams.” The bounty hunter was forced to break off her attack. She charged her plasma beam to a safe but effective level, and fired on the icy block that trapped her companion. As the melting blast released the covert ops agent, a silver sword lashed out from the shadows, spearing and carrying with it the instrument Snake held in his hand. Snake gulped a breath of air and immediately aimed his handgun at the smirking black-clad owner of that sword. Samus’ gun-arm followed suit. Sephiroth held his blade ready to strike again. He tucked the recorder into his cloak and closed his hand around something else. “Fire at will,” he laughed. “As the first shot hits me, my blade will be removing the head of the one who did not fire it. Which of you will sacrifice the other to ensure my demise?” Snake’s finger tightened on his trigger. The plasma beam hummed to life expectantly. Neither fired. Within his cloak, Sephiroth’s fingers snapped as his mouth formed the words, “chaos control.” Samus and Snake stared into the empty forest. A quick check in the X-ray spectrum revealed seven bright pinpoints, all back among the faraway buildings of the main compound. - - - Sephiroth gazed over the compound grounds from his window like a conqueror surveying newly claimed land. His boot ground Snake’s recorder into silicon and plastic scrap. This is Porta Dei. And it is destined to open unto me. He stood, watching the darkened stadium for the ripple in reality that signified a new day. The stars sparkled coldly overhead. The power to create a universe, and to rend the fabric of possibility that divorces it from all others. Power beyond imagining. Power beyond comprehension. Sephiroth rolled the smooth gray sphere of the chaos emerald across his fingers slowly. Power within my grasp. He stared into the emerald’s foggy depth. This world throbs with it; every atom held in its place against nature’s will. And the seven stones are the key to the gate of the gods. Together they can be used to tap into the very source of this energy. They can open the gate, releasing the power to remake one’s body, or one’s universe, as their owner sees fit. Sephiroth smiled chillingly for none to see. …and why stop there? This is Porta Dei, not Porta Deus! This is the power to daily reassemble a universe, not merely to create one! Imbued with it, I will become a god mightier than any possible outside this world. Through those portals made to admit challengers, a force beyond the natives’ reckoning will return. To Hyrule and Spira, Earth and the Galactic Federation, there will come a calamity from the skies. This is Porta Dei, and its god shall rule all of possibility. ~Fin~ Next Entry Back |