Day 3

Day 3 - Castlevania - Mind Control, Female Reader POV, and More!

Somehow, Dracula returned.

You take a step back and snap your whip violently, watching with delight as the silver tip flashes a moment before catching the demon in front of you across the chest. The blow leaves a bright red streak as though you’d cut him apart with a sword, but it’s shallow. Even if it is, the demon howls with fury, swinging a clawed hand at you that you dodge easily. The wound on his chest doesn’t bleed, but as you regain your feet after evading his attack, you can see a pale blue fire burning around the edges of the wound. There are a dozen other shallow wounds like it across his body, and the red-skinned demon is showing signs of slowing down. Clear pain from the holy fire on his wounds. Very soon, you should have a window for a killing blow.

If you’re being honest with yourself, this isn’t how you imagined your adult life going. At no point in the past did you fantasize about any of this; aside from maybe the part where you kick ass in leather pants and everybody thinks you're the coolest person they've ever met, but you haven't fantasized about that since you were a teenager. Probably. Peace had lasted for long enough that the Belmont name you were born with didn’t mean much. Of course, you saw the whip, everybody does. Your grandpa never let anybody visit without seeing the whip. But the first time you picked it up as a kid, it felt weird in your hand. With all the fantasy you were reading, it didn’t make any sense to you why anybody would ever fight with such a thing instead of a sword or an axe.

But then, one night, you had a nightmare. A nightmare that, as it turned out, everyone else in your family had shared. Training started for all the young Belmonts right away. Whips, guns, swords, thrown weapons, anything that might be useful against enemies like these. Because that nightmare meant they would be coming.

At that point, something strange happened. The next time you picked up the whip, it felt… right. Like an extension of your arm. Something you could call and recall without even needing to think about it. If your siblings and cousins were jealous, it was hard to notice when you were trouncing them.

Of course, your grandfather had taken issue with a girl being the one, but grandfather had always been strange. Not just strange in the sense that he said things that made everybody uncomfortable during the holidays - though he did plenty of that. Strange in the sense that he seemed to follow rules nobody else was informed of. Acted like he knew things and had seen things nobody else had. Considering he never actually fought Dracula himself, just was the son of somebody who had, you didn’t put much thought into it.

As the demon grows weaker and weaker, you can see him sizing you up for one final charge. Giving you the same lecherous look that he and all the others have given you, but one that you recognize as now being filled with begrudging, respectful fear. It’s a look you’ve come to savor. The look of a creature that realizes he’s lost, but now only hopes he can take you with him. You know with certainty at that moment that this thing hates you. It hates you in a deeper way than it hates any other human. That, to your understanding, is something for a Belmont to be very proud of.

It charges haphazardly, but you recognize right away that it’s feinting. You feint your own step forward, as if you’re going to punish his sloppy charge, but then he pulls back and swings his whole body into a wide rake of his claws. It you had actually responded the way you pretended to, it would have slashed open your throat even while embedding the demon’s torso on your silver blade in your offhand. Instead, you pull back the step and keep out of reach of the swipe, at the same time flicking your whip casually and bringing it spinning around the demon’s neck. Blue flames lick from underneath it as the demon reaches for his throat and gasps for air, then he squeals in pain as his motion finishes spearing himself on your blade.

When you and your brothers had started sparring as part of your training, they'd had a natural strength advantage, since your parents weren't the kind of psychos that forced their daughter to work out from a young age, and you'd never been the sportiest. But you were clever, damn clever. And even in the early days that had proven to be a better weapon than pure strength. It turned out that it was easier for a clever girl to match her brothers' strength than a strong boy to match his sister's wits. The demons all made the same mistakes that your brothers did, you try not to think too much on what that says about either party.

You try to think of a snappy one-liner to drop on him, come up short, and casually yank your whip to cover up for it. As the demon’s head flies from his body, both pieces burst into blue flame. It produces no heat, a wall of cold fire in front of you that leaves nothing in its place when it burns up.

The quipping wasn’t part of the training, it was just something everybody assumed you’d be good at. Perhaps that’s the true Belmont curse. One of your brothers was a better quipper, but that only motivated you more to beat him each time.

As the demon falls, you take off down the corridor, wiping a stray bead of sweat from your forehead as you go. There’s no slowing down and no taking breaks at this stage of the game, but you’re still in good shape. Still full of energy, a couple scratches and bruises but nothing serious. The castle is ever-changing and full of traps. Pausing for even a moment to catch your breath could put Dracula right on top of you or miles away, and you don’t want to gamble on which. The old Belmont record book spoke of some opponents he tried to outlast and some he tried to fight as quickly as possible, some of them he even succeeded with. What you understood from your studies was that he would be clever. Clever in all the ways his minions weren't. And you wouldn't know if he was cleverer than you until you finally met him.

Moving at high speed, you stop only long enough to plant your foot into the cobbles before driving your other heel into the door ahead of you as hard as you can. It’s not something you have to do, but it’s something you take a certain amount of joy in doing. There’s a hair-sized advantage it gives you over whatever is waiting on the other side. But mostly, the appeal is in trashing Dracula’s place. You have it on good authority that that makes him very, very mad. And any little insult you can throw on the pile of ass-kicking you’re about to give the undead bastard is just icing on the cake.

Then, as soon as the door gives way under you, you throw yourself into the room, whip brandished. You freeze when you realize there aren’t any monsters. Or at least, there aren’t any monsters attacking. There’s at least one monster there, he just seems surprised to see you, a glass of wine in one hand and a book in the other, sitting in a chair by the fireplace.

“Who the hell-” Dracula starts, setting his book and drink down on the table beside him and standing.

He’s unnaturally tall, face gaunt despite how wide of a frame his cloak gives him. A carefully-maintained patch of facial hair hangs greyish-white from his already pale chin, with a mustache above his lip of the same color that only make him seem paler by comparison. His hollow cheeks and tall brow are the same colorless, undead gray. Like ash. While his long hair is black as night. He’s wearing a fine dress shirt below his cloak, red cravat and perfect white blouse the only colors but black on his body. He’s every bit as regal and intimidating as you expected, but right now he looks too bewildered to be frightening.

You lash your whip at him in response, the silver tip fluttering within centimeters of his face, but he doesn’t flinch. It’s only through your intense training that you realize you should have hit him. He fluttered back ever so slightly to avoid your attack while trying to avoid looking like he’d moved. Clearly, he understands how serious of a danger your whip is. But he’s trying his absolute hardest to look unbothered, intimidating, like you’re not even the kind of threat that would justify the damage to his door.

“Ah, a Belmont.” He says it like a slur.

Dracula takes a moment to look you up and down, his eyes narrowing in a way that seems almost… judgemental. Not like he’s sizing you up; like he’s investigating some new form of insect that’s just crawled out of his half-eaten dinner, and the result is appropriately unappetizing.

“What have-” Dracula starts.

Some part of you decides that you either don’t want to hear what he had to say or you wanted to wipe that look off of his face. Whichever it is, that part of you wins out over any hesitation. You bring your whip up again in a movement sharp and fast enough to catch him off guard, then as you flick the whip and he starts to fade backward again, you step and twirl your wrist, bringing it back before striking the tip out further faster than he can blink. He’s still moving back, and he’s still incredibly fast, but it catches him off guard enough that the silver tip catches him. It leaves a scratch across one of his pale cheeks, bloodless. A small blue fire lines the wound like it would with any demon.

But he doesn’t flinch or wince. There’s no sound of pain from him. He reaches a hand to his cheek and squashes the fire quickly as he scowls.

“A Belmont indeed,” He snarls.

This time, he continually fades away, moving even faster than you can track as you strike and re-strike with your whip. He’s so fast he can close the gap instantly, though you’re surprised that he seems to stay on the defensive. Hanging just out of reach of your strikes or just to the side of where one of your blows lands.

“Tell me, did this generation of your wretched family have no sons to feed to me?” Dracula asks as you continue attacking. A couple of your swings seem to scratch at his cape or even catch him weakly, but you can’t land another blow as good as your first. “They send a girl child to kill me?”

Despite your best instincts, you feel yourself getting annoyed. His taunting is one thing, but his refusal to actual fight you - or have the decency to just get hit and die - is another. You change your tactic slightly, swinging a bit more carefully, aiming past him instead of at him.

“Perhaps I have been away too long. Perhaps the world forgets my power.” Dracula muses while continuing to dodge your attacks.

But as the whip swings past him, it strikes a painting on his wall and tears it. The next swing smashes some ornate-looking pot on his mantle. Another takes the wine glass down from his table on the backswing. You keep it up.

“Did your instructors not warn you of the danger that a woman would face against me?” Dracula asks, not seeming to notice your change in tactics.

In actuality, your instructors did warn you. They made it tremendously clear that Dracula was a handsome man that had a way with women yet seemingly no interest in any but the one who had been taken from him. There had been a very big deal made about his wiles, his charms, and his aura. Almost more than was made about his fighting style. That had always struck you as an oversight, but now, in this moment, you realize it was because Dracula isn’t all that good of a fighter. No wonder he always loses.

Your next swing crashes into one of his bookshelves, cracking the fine, likely both ancient and very expensive wood of one of the shelves. Then you take out another painting, a framed daguerreotype, and a model ship in a glass bottle. You aim your arm for the previously-damaged shelf and strike it again. This time, the wood splits properly, spilling several dusty tomes all over the floor with an impossible to mistake clatter. Pages and spines flood out like guts pooling underneath some freshly-gored monster made of pulp and ink. And this one, Dracula notices. His lips freeze mid-sound as he casts his eyes slowly around his room, taking notice of all the damage you’ve been causing while you’ve been missing him.

“Insolent…” He begins, then folds his hands over his stomach for a moment. “Clever, actually. Previous Belmonts would have simply tried to fling verbal barbs at me until one of them was insulting by pure law of averages. You’ve taken a far more effective, nuanced route to drawing my ire.”

As he lifts his hands from his stomach, you see him fidgeting with a ring on one of his fingers. Compared to the other, more showy jewelry he wears, it’s a golden band of very little note. It sits on his long, pale ring finger between an intricate women’s wedding ring and a dull bronze men’s band. He turns the boring ring around, bringing an impressive red gem from the rear of his finger to the front. Then he holds his hands up, defensively.

For some reason, your eyes stay on the red gem. It catches the light of the fire and seems both to flicker and to blink. For a second, it’s a gentle ember. A small piece of fire he’s plucked from the hearth and now holds in his palm, radiating warmth out into the room around it. Then it’s a monstrous eye, wincing and fluttering and glaring out from his center toward you. A truer gaze from his rotten soul out to you than his own eyes could ever muster. Whether it is warm or cold, friend or foe, you find you’re having trouble looking away from it. Whenever you want to look away from the eye, it becomes an ember again. When you feel too drawn to the ember, the eye returns.

“Not every Belmont has succeeded in banishing me, and not every Belmont has approached me whip in hand. Some swing swords, others carry guns. But you’ve earned your place among them in the one universal constant.” His voice seems… different. He’s speaking to you now in a way that isn’t taunting, isn’t even that distant. It feels almost like he’s confessing something to you. “You have all greatly upset me.”

Despite yourself, you feel a pang of something like guilt. Frowning, you rip your eyes away from the ring and back up to his face. But his hand follows your gaze fast enough to make your arm freeze before you can fire another whip lash out. Now, next to his mouth, the red gem makes his gleaming white fangs seem to glitter like gems amidst the warm red of his tongue, the ivory pall of his lips. He brings the ring higher, next to his eyes. And that sight makes your resolve weaken. You take back your comment about the ring being a truer look into his soul than his eyes ever could have been. The gem on the ring burns outward, both cruel and gentle, but in both passionate. His eyes are wounded, soft, human. That feeling like guilt creeps back.

“Don’t run from it. Look for a moment at what you’ve done.” He says with a deeper sadness than you expected.

You’ve never been a romantic, but glancing around the room, you can’t help but feel some shame about your choice of tactic. Both of the paintings you slashed were delicate, likely one of a kind oil on canvas. One was a rather elegant portrait of Dracula himself, which you could give or take aside from how fine a job the artist seems to have done. But the other is a gothic portrait of a woman in repose, wrapped in fine silks, her face either painted with the softness of sleep or the silence of death. Based on the way she’s been framed, the attention to her every small beauty, it seems the painter cared about her very much. And the books. You were so caught up in the moment you didn’t even think about the books. There's probably several dozen first prints of world classics on the floor right now with aged spines straining or crackling pages curled. One is so precariously close to the fire that you want to leap out and save it from burning, but you find yourself rooted to the spot.

"You're no fool, this was a very intentional tactic on your part." He sighs with paternal disappointment. "And yet, if you'd charged in like a bull in a china shop without a thought in your head, I doubt you could have done more damage."

He's right, of course. It was an intentional decision on your part to go after his things. Not just his things, beautiful things. Was stopping him worth this? Is it worth burning down the Library of Alexandria to kill him You shake your head, closing your eyes to get the damn ring out of your field of vision, but in the dark behind your eyelids there's still a burning red spot where it once was. Of course he's evil. Of course you went in thinking that any cost was worth it. Why are you feeling this way now? You didn't feel this way about killing roughly a billion demons on your way up to him. In fact, even now, you're still not feeling regret about the demons and monsters. Why are your eyes watering over some dusty old books?

"Now that's curious." Dracula purrs, "Your expression, you aren't like your kin. You actually feel some sort of remorse. Is it just that you're a lover of classic art? Or is there something more?"

You open your eyes again and looking at the ring once more makes your legs feel weak. There was something you were going to say to him before you opened them, but you can't remember it for the life of you now. Your eyes are welling up, you honestly thing you're going to cry. In fact, when you raise one of your hands to wipe your eyes, you realize only distantly that you've dropped both whip and sword. You're standing mere feet away from Dracula and you've disarmed yourself. Why did you do that?

Why did you do what? You realize you aren't even sure what it was you were thinking so hard about just a second ago. It's not that your mind is empty, it's that there's a hole in it. That ring, the red glow it keeps putting into you, it's like he's tunneled through your eyes right into your mind and everything is running out through it. It took you a while to realize that you'd disarmed yourself and that you should be upset about that, and its taken you even longer to realize that Dracula is in arm's reach of you at this point. And it's not that he's come closer, it's that you've made your way over. His fireplace crackles right next to you, it didn't used to be there, you're pretty sure. Wasn't there some demon you were here to fight?

The book is in your hands, you've bent over to pick it up and you gingerly wipe the soot from the cover, then unfold an abused page and look for any ash that might have found its way inside. You're holding it like you would a baby. Then you set it down on an empty shelf nearby, careful as a librarian. When you turn back to face Dracula again, the glowing red gem feels warmer, more comforting than it did before. The shame diminishes for a second - no matter what else you fail to hold in your mind, that part has remained. When Dracula smiles warmly, you feel proud. But you realize there's a lot more you have to apologize for. You'll do anything to make the empty, ruinous feeling in you go away. You're better than this, that knowledge also doesn't go away. Even if the niggling voice of the embarrassment of having done what you've done makes you question if you really are any better than this.

"I thought so, there is something in you." Dracula reaches out, his hand brushes your cheek, and you lean into the touch. It makes you tingle from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. "There is a part of which is fragile, gentle, and clever, but also a part of you which is violent, strong, and thoughtless. Which part would you rather erase?"

The strangeness of his question doesn't even register to you, and you answer without thinking. It's only after the words have left your mouth that the strangeness of both the question and the answer register, but you stop thinking about that when he speaks again.

"The clever part?" Dracula raises an eyebrow theatrically, you blush and giggle at him drawing it out, feeling like the volunteer in a stage magician's act. Feeling your ears get warm like there's too much attention on you. "Well, well, well."

And you drop. You feel suddenly off-balance, blinking your eyes and trying to regain your bearings. The hole between your eyes is gone, the guilt is gone, and for a moment you're gone too. But as you come back you're on your knees in front of him, your face down hovering over his black boots. Where the guilt once was now is only a sheer ocean of gratefulness. For him to forgive you, to relieve you of the feelings that were tormenting you. There isn't anything you can do that shows enough gratitude. When he speaks again, his voice is like the air you need to breathe. And the warmth of his approval makes it feel like you're glowing. Without even thinking, you kiss the boot in front of you. Lavishing it with genuine, unabashed love like you would his lips - if he'd allow you to.

"Perhaps you feel unburdened now?" Dracula asks. "You've proven there's a kind heart even in a Belmont's chest."

Kissing up his boot to his heel, you hesitate for a moment, worried that straightening up even a little would belie the gratitude you still feel. But he chuckles, and that is invitation enough for you to kiss up the boot to his mid-calf, where it ends. Then you wrap your arms around his leg, holding onto him as your only support in this world. The red dot in your vision fades now, a vignette of gentle glow like everything is firelit and romantic. You eventually come to be sitting at his feet, nuzzling your face against his groin, kissing it. Through his pants, you can feel his manhood, growing harder against your cheek and lips. He reaches down and tousles your hair.

"And a generous heart," He purrs. "Perhaps, in time, generous enough to earn reciprocity. But for now, there are still things that need to be fixed. You shouldn't need to be told what they are."

You bolt upright, looking at him and bowing obediently. Only distantly as you do this do you see your clothes sitting folded neatly on his chair. Then, right away, you begin to tidy up the books you scattered on his floor. As you do this, he tosses your whip into the fireplace.

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