I had just concluded the meeting with the freefolk and the Watch a few minutes ago, and now I sat in the castle, thinking and calculating my next steps. Given my position, it all circled back to the Others, or more precisely, the Great Other. I had no desire to wipe out their entire species. Such genocide was unwarranted, even if they intended the same for us.
With my warnings of vermin and the manpower the Night's Watch now held, far stronger than the weary rangers who had sallied to Craster's Keep in the original timeline, I hoped to have averted the mutiny, or at least blunted it. Even if the fools among them pressed forward with their treachery, I trusted that Qhorin would be alert enough to end it before it caused lasting damage.
I turned my gaze to the window. Outside, a bat clung to the ledge, staring into the snow-capped Frostfangs. The sight forced an admission: I did not have to help them. I had no true obligation. My actions so far had been nothing more than echoes of my old self, scraps of humanity refusing to let go. But I had been Dracula for more than a year now, long enough for the burden of the name, the weight of the title, the sheer pedigree of the monster, to bleed into me.
It no longer felt like two different lives in conflict. I was something in between, a vampire with a conscience.
Lounging back in Dracula's study, I turned toward the mirror in the pit. A wave of my hand, and it assembled, its surface rising with a shimmer. My reflection stared back.
A vampire with a conscience.
Dracula had once possessed one himself. Lisa had been that voice, the fragile tether of humanity he lost, when the church cruelly ripped her from him. I had inherited the role in her stead, a ghost of my past life anchoring me where he had cast his anchor away.
The conscience of my former life, leashed to the predatory instincts of the body I now wore. It was too early to speak of balance, but I knew enough to understand: so long as I did not discard either side, so long as I did not lean too heavily into one and starve the other, balance would come.
It was that same cold, rational predation that made it clear. As long as I remained on this side of the Wall, the Others would never stop being my problem. They would have to be dealt with, sooner rather than later.
The situation reminded me of the balance the Kindred in V:TM maintained with their Beasts. The only difference was that my Beast was no raging mental construct, no phantom hunger trying to puppeteer me. Mine was something worse, centuries of pure inhumanity distilled into Dracula's psyche.
I raised my hand and let the claws move, wrist twisting with practiced precision. My fingers drew runes on the mirror's surface: vision, grounding, far-sight, stability. And finally, one more, drawn almost instinctively, one I had come to recognize for what it was, transference.
The mirror rippled, and the image shifted. The North filled its surface, not the mundane forests and hills but the farthest reaches, the border where the Free Folk's lands ended and the wasteland began, leading straight into the eternal storm that cloaked the Land of Always Winter.
The temperature in my study plummeted. The spell had not just opened sight. It had torn a hole, a passage, a portal between here and there.
I rose from my seat and stepped forward, cloak trailing, until I stood before it. The image yawned wide, snow roaring, and I stood like a great black bat poised at the threshold of a grave.
I stared into the storm. And the storm stared back.
Blue eyes glimmered within the abyss, so sharp and cold they felt physical against my skin.
This was no mere Other.
I straightened, every inch of Dracula's pride and immortal bearing refusing to yield, even before what could only be a god native to this land.
What is a mere god, when the personification of Death itself has trembled before my gaze?
The thought came to me unbidden, followed by a memory.
Not mine. Not the man I had been before waking here. This was Dracula's, buried deep in the marrow of the body I wore, surfacing as though the sight of those cold, unblinking blue flames had tugged it loose.
A battlefield of black skies. Smoke choking the stars. Corpses in endless rows, impaled upon spikes of his own making. And at the center, a figure, something so vast and dreadful that men had named it a god, had fallen to their knees in worship, in terror. It had stood there, a massive figure of white bone, putrid purple skin, a tattered cape and a white bone scythe with the wailing skulls of those it had ripped on it. The figure had come to reap the lives that Dracula had taken, had gestured at Dracula and praised him like one would a well-trained mutt.
And Dracula had laughed.
A laughter of contempt, scorn sharpened into a blade. The next moment, the figure lay before me. Its skull-shaped head with a crown of bones on its head had half the protruding stalks broken. Its death-dealing scythe, broken in half over Dracula's knees, and the figure stared up and all I could see in Death's eyes was fear, and Dracula laughed, savoring in that moment.
The memory snapped back, leaving the echo of that laugh rattling in my chest. That mad laughter, this was not the cultured and well-mannered aristocrat, mage, and scientist that Dracula had been later in life. This was the monster, the conqueror, the son of the dragon, the figure whom all Vampires around the world swore fealty to.
I exhaled, slow and measured, as the abyss of the storm swirled before me, and those eyes continued to glow. Then it blinked.
The Great Other.
There was no need for names, no need for introductions. Its gaze pressed against me, a weight that tried to peel me open, strip me down to something small, mortal, and afraid. For another man, even another sorcerer, that weight might have been enough to shatter. For me, it was recognition.
Two predators staring at each other across a boundary forged of magic and sorcery. And it had been the first to blink. While I experienced that memory, something about me must have changed, changed enough to surprise it.
Was it time for a dialogue?
Then I felt it, while I stood before the mirror, a nudge at the back of my skull, followed by the door to my study which had been half open, slamming shut. It took me a microsecond to understand, the castle was reaching out to me. Castlevania in all her aware glory was calling me.
My cloak stirred, though there was no wind in the study. The mirror rippled again, unstable, so I waved a hand to the side in a cutting gesture and the mirror immediately disassembled and floated in jagged pieces before slowly floating back down into the pit.
No, it wasn't.
The hidden door, to the side of the fireplace that held a portrait of Lisa, groaned open slowly, and I smiled. I had a feeling it was good news, the moment I turned to the now revealed passage, I heard footsteps beyond my study door, and before I could bother to acknowledge it, the hidden entrance began to open close once more as the previously locked door to my study unlocked.
The next moment, I heard a knock on my door. I stared at where the hidden entrance had been a second ago in confusion. There is no way that the castle had not been aware that someone was coming to see me just a few seconds ago, yet it had played with me.
"You tease." I grumbled to myself in a way that was beneath Dracula, which was a good thing that I was the only one present. The castle replied to my words with a steam vent whistling somewhere in what I was going to assume was laughter. Before the person could knock a second time, I waved my hand and the door opened, and I was greeted to the sight of Marwyn.
The brown-haired, unaesthetically pleasing maester stared at my brooding form in surprise before roughly transitioning into a bow. "Greetings, master Dracula."
"Maester Marwyn correct?" The middle-aged man nodded in response, so I walked past him and gestured.
"Walk with me."
Marwyn scrambled after me.
"I assumed you've questions."
Marwyn adjusted his robe as he hurried to keep pace. His gait was ungainly, but there was no mistaking the eagerness in his eyes. "Questions, yes. Dozens of them, my lord. You appear from nowhere, you command a fortress that reminds me of Harrenhal with the sensation of something peeking over your shoulder, and you speak of the Others as though you do not think them a threat. The world has been without such power since the Doom. It would be dereliction not to ask."
His bluntness almost made me smile. Almost. "You do not grovel," I said instead. "That much I find… tolerable. Ask then. But you will not receive every answer you want."
"Very well." He cleared his throat. "You are not of Westeros. That much is plain. Your tongue betrays you, though your speech is learned. So, where did you come from?"
I thought about how much to reveal and at the end of the day, did I really have any reason to hide things?
"Nowhere you could reach, maester. Not across land, nor sea, nor sky. Another world, if you must have a word for it." I replied smoothly.
Marwyn's steps faltered, his jaw tightening as though he were holding back disbelief, no, not disbelief, the urge to shout in joy at being proved correct. "That's wonderful. I suspected as much of course. Another world, much like the stone Toad in the Isle of Toads."
"The stone toad?" I inquired, slowing down in interest. I remembered Bloodraven saying something about how a race that came with a falling star, however they were too far for him or the children to have had any contact.
"Yes, I'm one of the people to have been to the Isle of Toads, and come out whole, through guile, and force. Few are those who were able to resist both the call and the change. I only stayed with them for a night, but come dawn, the sailors who journeyed forth with me had slowly begun to gain webbed hands and fish-like characteristics. Alongside the dream I had the night before and their exhalations about a god that slept between the void, it was enough to send me running."
For the first time since we began to speak, I froze, as I began to put things together. A strange people on an island, with fish-like and webbed appendages, the rapid corruption of the visitors and sailors, the dreams, the prayers to a god that slept between the void, an outer god.
Did GRRM really sneak fucking Cthulhu into his verse? The very acknowledgement of that name, even spoken as it was inside my mind, sent a shudder through my being as I suddenly gained a muchunasked for understanding. I hurriedly compartmentalized the thought as well as the name into the deepest corners of my mind, drowning the sudden knowledge and feeling of something stirring away.
"I see," I replied vaguely, as I began to move once more, my steps not half as fluid as they were previously. My cloak brushed the stone as we moved, and the walls of Castlevania groaned like the castle could sense my worry and was trying to distract me. "Forget about that," I started to change the topic. "Do not concern yourself overmuch with the how, I doubt you can replicate such a feat. Concern yourself with what stands in front of you now."
Marwyn licked his lips, his mind running faster than his tongue could follow. "Forgive me, but I already have an idea, and curiosity, especially about the higher mysteries, has always been my sin. It's the fortress isn't it? The free folk speak about the day you arrived in hushed whispers, about the lightning strike and the sudden appearance of the castle. A castle that is sorcery beyond Valyria itself. Even the greatest spires of Oldtown are nailed to the ground, but yours… it breathes. Is it alive?"
I smiled, something about Marwyn's drive for knowledge, his curiosity and desire to know and learn spoke to me, spoke to Dracula. It reminded me of Lisa in a way.
"It is aware," I corrected with a lecturing tone. "Alive? That is too simple. It is not flesh, nor blood, nor bone. Think of it as you would think of a mind. A mind vast enough to encompass a kingdom, and loyal enough to obey its master. Castlevania is more than stone. And that is all I would say for now."
Marwyn shuddered at the image that his head must have conjured following my words, though he tried to mask it with a cough. "Extraordinary. To forge such a bond… you speak of loyalty, but that implies will on its part. It chooses you as much as you claim it."
"Correct." I allowed myself a thin smile. "And it amuses itself at my expense when it sees fit."
He glanced up at the vaulted ceiling as though half-expecting it to collapse on his head. "Then I must ask about your nature. You are no human, that's for certain, but not so otherworldly like the Others either. Forgive my bluntness, but what are you? Man, god, demon?"
I hummed in consideration for a bit before replying. "None of those, though men have called me each in turn. I was born human, long ago, now... I'm something else. But you need not wrap your mind around titles. Simply understand that I am not bound by the frailties of flesh."
Marwyn's eyes gleamed. "Immortality."
"A curse and a boon." I let out in a low tone, that silenced Marwyn. We walked a few more paces before I gestured the robed man to speak. "I've answered enough, now it is your turn. I do not care for much knowledge of these lands, what I do care for is magic. Or the Higher Mysteries as you call it. The ones available in this realm. Speak to me of them Maester Marwyn."
Marwyn nodded, and looked up in realization as the door ahead of us opened, revealing my study once more, and I gestured him into it. There was much to learn.