Chapter 31: With a Red Light of Triumph in His Eyes, Part 7

"Oh. Great."

No enemies. A breath of relief, for a change. The path ended abruptly, Daniela standing right at the edge. Beyond that, there was only a black sea, viscous and foreboding. Like quicksand, it could swallow them whole before they even realized it if they took one more step.

This shouldn’t be a big problem, Daniela thought. By now, she should have learned not to tempt that treacherous mistress called fate.

One of the mages stepped forward, placing both hands on the ground. Ice shot out from the points of contact, covering the gap and forming a bridge.

But it didn’t last long.

The bridge collapsed, and the shattered ice disappeared without a trace, devoured by the black sea.

Good thing no one dared to step on it before that happened.

Several others offered their own solutions, all failing miserably, no matter what they tried. The worst failure came from one who attempted to fly over it. That wouldn’t have helped the others, but he didn’t even make it across. As he should have expected, his flight failed midway. He fell, sinking with a resounding splash into the black sea.

“Help me, damn it!” He thrashed against the sticky substance, which clung to his arms and legs, dragging him into the unfathomable depths, where, at best, a slow and painful death awaited him.

No one stepped forward to lend him a hand.

Daniela wasn’t any different in that regard.

She wanted to help, of course. She’d help anyone; that’s why she’d spent her life hunting monsters. But now, helping meant living to fight Dracula. Risking everything for one person would jeopardize the fate of humanity.

Fortunately, Daniela had a way to help him without risking anything.

“Hey! Idiot, look at me!” She finally got his attention. “Catch this.”

Daniela summoned her spear and threw it. The man caught it clumsily, but at least he didn’t drop it. She called the spear back, dragging the man out of the black sea with it. He collapsed at her feet, his forehead nearly touching the ground.

“Thank you. Thank you.”

“I just did what needed to be done. Anyone have an idea?”

“If we could find what’s interfering with the magic,” one person said. “It’s clearly not that black muck. And there’s some kind of limit. It must be nearby, but where?”

That wasn’t very helpful, but at least the person got them talking about it. They started discussing, making plans, some more suicidal than others. They’d faced immense dangers to get here, each monster stranger and more powerful than the last. Everyone present had survived where dozens had died miserably. They couldn’t let a broken patch of ground and a bit of black gunk stop them.

“Typical mages,” Alex said dismissively. “Everything has to revolve around magic.”

Magic, counter-magic—your box is too small.

“So, what do you suggest, genius?” someone challenged her.

He spoke as if he didn’t expect her to have a better idea, but Daniela knew her companion wouldn’t have said anything unless she had an alternative, no matter how justified her criticism was.

“It should be obvious. We can bring the walls down. In fact, I’ll do it myself.”

Alex fired her sword, one copy after another, driving them like stakes into the stone walls. When she detonated them, the walls crumbled, covering the floor entirely. Almost. It would be like walking across a bridge of rubble, but still better than what they had before. Of course, the stones wouldn’t disappear. Whatever trap was interfering only worked against magic. The rubble was real.

Alex and Daniela were the first to cross. But not the first nor the last to do so cautiously, thinking, at least Daniela, that at any moment, a hand might reach up from the depths to grab her ankle. But none of that happened. In fact, nothing happened at all. For once, they crossed a room in this castle without incident. They hadn’t even lost anyone.

Too easy. She knew it was tempting fate, but she couldn’t help thinking that.

But it really was that easy. Around the corner, they’d surely encounter more problems, but they left this room behind without a final trap or unpleasant surprise. Maybe Dracula had counted on the fact, as Alex had said, that the mages would think, as usual, to solve the problem with magic. Maybe he’d counted on losing at least a few before someone like Alex came up with a more practical idea.

Either way, he had been wrong.

Well, danger didn’t always have to be at its peak. Or it didn’t have to be only about the danger they faced. With every second they wasted, more innocent people would die.

That fit with Dracula’s sadism. The trap didn’t need to be perfect; it didn’t need to physically harm them. Though if he was counting on most of them caring about what was happening out there to people who couldn’t even use magic, he’d dealt with very different humans in his time. Daniela only knew for sure that Alex would feel the pain, just like she did.

Maybe she was being unfair, but that’s how she truly felt.

In any case, it didn’t change anything.

And they still had a long way to go. Other things to focus on.

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Another fight. Mostly skeleton soldiers, some of them dropped through holes in the ceiling that closed up once they passed through, brought by winged beasts with claws like swords.

Focusing wasn’t the right word, she supposed.

After so many years, she carried them out almost on autopilot. She was even getting used to the rules and flow of this castle. Which didn’t mean she could afford to be distracted, of course, or that she had anything to be distracted by in the first place. It was just another sign she had been at this for far too long.

As if she didn’t already know.

She just prayed she had the chance to heed those warnings. One last chance, at least.

——

“They’re progressing too quickly,” Dracula complained. “I know that’s what I wanted—worthy opponents—but it’s a little annoying after so much preparation. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have bothered.”

No one challenged his outrageous statement, naturally.

He could do or say whatever he pleased; that’s how things worked. That’s why he shouldn’t have put so much effort into this. Not only because those pesky humans were ruining everything, but because he had nothing to prove. The return tour of Dracula’s castle? So what! If they didn’t already know how terrifying he was, that was their problem, not his.

Dracula crossed his arms.

“Well, at least I still have you, my friend.”

“Of course, my lord,” Death replied. “I won’t fail you.”

“What? No, I meant the squid.”

Davy Jones looked at him with wide eyes. Maybe he was offended. Or more likely, he was burning with the desire to go out there and slaughter as many humans as possible.

“Go on, get out there and wait for them.”

Whether it was his eagerness or the small detail that he was still hypnotized, his new best friend hurriedly left the throne room. He would be the final bulwark against the invaders.

“Are you sure he’ll do a good job?” Death asked.

Dracula shrugged.

“Sure, why not?”

If he had any objections, he didn’t voice them. Death remained silent, his tattered cloak disappearing into the shadows. At least to those with ordinary sight. His eyes, however, couldn’t be hindered by the darkness, as he was the master of shadows. His eyes could see through almost anything.

Dracula smiled, his lips stained red with the blood of innocents, served to him in a goblet like wine.

Just as he could pierce through the present with his penetrating gaze and see the future where he triumphed.

Time was always on the side of an immortal being. Dracula was the only one who walked with time. So his victory was inevitable. Sooner or later, he would rise above the ashes of humanity.

Unlike the victory he would achieve today, that moment would bring him no joy at all.

But it would come.

——

They overcame countless challenges. More waves of monsters than clever traps, to be honest, but she almost appreciated that.

Except for the massive bastard who had welcomed them to the castle and that room of black muck, the trap rooms were where they lost the most people. Every one of them, for better or worse, was a warrior. It was as natural to them as breathing.

The beasts they dealt with were too eager, bloodthirsty, for traps.

When it came to traps, they mostly knew the cursed politicking at the Watchtower.

So, yes, this endless barrage of monsters was almost a relief. No matter how tired she was.

In the end, it wasn’t so bad. The group, ever smaller, reached the objective before Daniela even realized it. She believed everyone noticed instantly. There was no doubt Dracula awaited beyond the next doors, and it had nothing to do with how elegant and well-decorated they were compared to everything else, which was already extravagant, but rather with something else.

A feeling.

A presence that took their breath away, even though they weren’t truly in his presence yet. Compared to the monsters they’d slain so far, large and small, the last obstacle before the doors was nothing more than a guy with a squid head.

Wait.

Now that she looked closely, the damned thing was plastic.

“Wait, isn’t that the guy from Pirates of the...”

It was as if the whole world held its breath. Some brave soul stepped forward and

A brave soul stepped forward and delivered a punch to the person who had started asking a question everyone already knew the answer to, silencing their stupidity. They had no idea the title had already been mentioned half a dozen times, along with the character’s name. There was no way to save the author from a lawsuit unless this story kept selling pretty much nothing. There didn’t seem to be any danger of that changing.

“Who from what?” Alex asked, in his usual monotone voice.

“It doesn’t matter,” Daniela said, eager to forget the graceless detour and move on. “If Dracula’s placed him here as the final guard, he has to be the most dangerous enemy we’ve faced yet.”

As proof, he wasn’t doing anything—just staring at them silently. As if daring them to attack. As if saying they’d be torn to pieces the moment they stepped forward and dared to test their luck against him. He hadn’t even drawn his sword. She didn’t know why he wore that mask, but she didn’t care. Daniela assumed a combat stance, lowering her center of gravity. Her phantom spear gleamed brighter in the light of a few torches and the faint glow filtering through the windows from the overcast evening sky.

No one dared to take the first step, so it would have to be her.

Well, them.

Alex also sprang into action, but Daniela moved just a bit faster. She forced herself to be, so that the creature’s full power would focus on her in that first instant, not on her friend. So she’d be the one with the highest chance of dying.

The monster unsheathed its sword slowly.

As expected, the fight was over in a flash.

“What the hell?”

Daniela had impaled him in the chest with no effort, causing him to explode. His guts flew everywhere, his heart was nowhere to be found, and his ribs were bent open like the petals of a grotesque flower. In short, a complete mess.

It wasn’t a misunderstanding (how the hell would she have known?) nor some kind of illusion. Daniela withdrew her spear, and the corpse fell to the ground, blood and foam spilling from its mouth. Then she heard it exhale its last breath, and that was perhaps the most surprising thing of all. She realized she’d spoken too soon when she noticed even the sword was made of plastic. Why? Well, just a guess, of course, but also because of the sound it made when it hit the floor. There was no way it was made of steel.

Alex crouched down to rip the head off the corpse. Well, the helmet around the head. Daniela had almost managed to decapitate him for real just by hitting him in the chest. Almost. It wasn’t much of a difference, but something is something.

Because…

“Who the hell did I just kill?”

She was even starting to feel bad about it. Who had she killed? Some idiot tempted by promises of power, money, or women? Some poor fool who’d been manipulated? Either way, someone who didn’t belong in the middle of a disaster like this—the proof was how easily he’d fallen. She may not have killed an innocent, but she hadn’t killed a warrior either, and that weighed on her, despite everything.

But there was no time for regrets. Feeling as if she were in a dream, she staggered toward the doors and pushed them open. It was a throne room worthy of the king of this castle. Well-lit—or at least, it should have been, but the curtains were drawn, so the brightest thing in the room was the red eyes of a savage beast.

Of course, that beast was the Monster.

The Prince of Darkness.

The bastard they’d seen in that forest, what seemed like ages and ages ago.

He was completely alone, but that didn’t matter. According to legend, the Prince of Darkness didn’t need his army. He existed solely because all creatures of the shadows bowed before his superiority, allowing him to delegate the dirty work. Nothing more, nothing less.

“Welcome. You’ve done very well, I must admit. I didn’t expect so many of you to survive to face me.”

So many? There weren’t even three dozen of them.

Daniela shuddered.

“But I’m afraid all roads lead to me, and here they end.”

The monster stood up. He let the crystal goblet he’d been drinking from fall, shattering it into a thousand pieces. The red liquid that spilled was certainly not wine.

A clear message. It was as if he were saying: next, it’ll be your blood.

With a Red Light of Triumph in His Eyes, Part 7: END