Castlevania: Refrain of Darkness Chapter 4

[eiahmon]

Title: Castlevania: Refrain of Darkness
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't own.
Summary: Aqua receives a mission to investigate a new world that's appeared on the council's radar due to a Heartless invasion, and finds that everything is different here. Now she must team up with Juste Belmont and track down the source of the Heartless in a world where souls have all the power and hearts don't belong.

 

4.

Juste laid on his bedroll and stared up at the slowly brightening sky. Part of him was antsy to get a move on, but he tried to ignore it. They were only a few hours from the castle, and he could faintly sense it on the edges of his awareness. As always there was the Chaos power that clung to Dracula and his abode, but it was weak and barely noticeable. He wasn't sure if Aqua could sense it at all; her senses seemed to be geared towards more light and dark elements. Truth be told though, if he hadn't been born a Belmont and hadn't actually been in Dracula's presence inside his castle, he probably wouldn't be able to sense the Chaos either.

Speaking of Aqua, he glanced over to his left and saw her sitting by the embers of the dying fire, deep in thought. Maybe now was a good time to ask about this glider that she had spoken about.

He sat up. "Miss Aqua?" She looked at him. "That glider you mentioned. Could you show it to me?"

Aqua perked up. She'd been lost in a daze, thinking of nothing and everything at once. She was grateful for the reminder, and hopped up. "Sure! It looks like we've got enough space over here," she said, gesturing to an open area nearby that wasn't occupied by horses or camping gear. She summoned her blade. "Now usually, I would be wearing my armor as well, because I can use the glider to move between worlds and the space between can be dangerous to people without proper protection. But since I'm not crossing borders today, I'll leave it compressed." She willed her Keyblade to change, and in a flash of light, her weapon was no longer there. In its place floated a large dark grey and blue metal contraption that she knew Juste had probably never seen anything like before.

Juste imagined his mother scolding him for catching flies as he stared at the... thing her weapon had become. He slowly stood up and walked over to it. He could feel the magic coming off of it, weaker than what her weapon put off but it was enough to tell him clearly that her keyblade had indeed changed form.

He couldn't even begin to describe the shape it had taken, but it was in various shades of gray and blue, and most importantly...

It was hovering.

Hovering above the ground, floating freely, and Juste's senses let him no that it was due to no extra magic on her part.

"And you ride this?" he asked after a few minutes of examining it in detail. "How?"

She smiled at his obvious confusion, and she jumped on to her glider to demonstrate. "Like this," she replied. She took off for a short fly around the glade, careful to avoid the fire and the horses. She could move much faster in more open areas, but due to the smaller space, she rode at a much decreased speed. She came to a stop after a few moments of that back where she started, and looked to Juste to see his reaction.

He watched in awed silence as he watched her fly. He'd heard rumors from the Belnades Clan that, in other parts of the world, mages and wizards had learned how to use magic to enable them to fly, but he had always scoffed at such stories. If God had meant humans to fly, He would have given them wings. But this... maybe the stories were true?

Or maybe she really was from another world, a part of him whispered.

She glided down and stopped in front of him, grinning happily, and he laughed quietly as he walked up to her -

His senses screamed in warning, and he had just enough time to catch the smile vanish from her face as he felt that dreaded feeling, that -wave- of dark power that could only mean one thing, came roaring up from behind him.

"Get down!" he shouted as he threw himself to the ground. It wouldn't affect the horses all that much, but them...

She felt the rush of power ripple past as Juste dropped to the ground, and unable to move quickly enough, the blast slammed her off her glider into a tree. Her glider vanished as she had made no effort to make it remain. Her head ached from colliding with the tree, and she was completely winded from the impact, struggling to regain the ability to breathe.

Juste raised his head as the wave rolled past. Behind him he could hear the horses whinnying and stamping their hooves in fright, but he ignored that as he saw Aqua slam into tree.

"Miss Aqua!" He scrambled to his feet and ran over to her as he fished a healing potion from one of his pockets. He knelt down in front of her and was relieved when both of her eyes focused on him right away. "Drink this." he said as he held the opened bottle to her mouth.

'Sure,' she wanted to say, 'just as soon as I can breathe again.' She pushed the bottle away from her as breathing was more important than trying to swallow. She tried not to glare at him while she slowly managed to force air back into her lungs. She coughed uncontrollably during this process, eventually managing to calm her diaphragm and lungs sufficiently to where breathing was no longer an issue. "I don't need that," she said roughly, her throat a bit sore. "I hit my head and had the wind knocked from me, but I'm all right."

"Are you sure?" he asked as he put the cork back on the lid. When she nodded, he stuffed it in a pocket. "Are you sure that you're alright?"

"Yes, I'm fine! You're as bad as Ven and Terra, goodness. I'm not made of glass," she complained. "Just tell me what that was."

Despite everything, he had to laugh lightly at her comment. Yes, she was fine. "That was the castle resurrecting." he said, serious again. "We need to hurry."

"I thought it only did that when Dracula resurrects?" she questioned worriedly. She automatically packed up her things and readied her horse, however, drawn by his anxiety.

He smothered the fire with a quick burst of water magic, saddled his horse, and gathered his things. "The castle comes first." he explained as he worked. "The way the Crimson Stone works is that it gathers and collects Chaos power. When it has enough, it feeds it to the castle, resurrecting it. Once the castle is up, it also starts gathering power, and it acts as a conduit, sending it through the Crimson Stone to Dracula. When there is enough, he resurrects in a physical form. He usually appears a few days after the castle does, though he doesn't always resurrect at full power. If his followers offer up a sacrifice of sufficient power, he will resurrect at full power, but if he doesn't, he will simply gain it over the course of a few more days." He climbed up into the saddle and gave Aqua a serious look. "Dracula at full power is extremely dangerous. Only Trevor, Christopher, and Grandfather have faced him in that state, so we have to hurry and hope no one offered up a sacrifice."

"Oh no," she murmured, eyes wide. Now the need to hurry made perfect sense. "I don't know what chaos power is, but I certainly get the idea." After ensuring that everything had been collected and the wards wiped out, she jumped on her saddle and followed Juste's lead further up the mountain.

Juste said nothing to his companion as he urged his horse up the mountain trail as quickly as the terrain would allow. It was too soon for Dracula to resurrect, far too soon. With it being only five years since his last attempt, there was no way possible for the Crimson Stone to gather so much power so quickly, so either his followers had helped things along or...

Whatever it was that they could sense up there was responsible. And that meant that he was dealing with something completely unknown to the Belmonts and Belnades. He hoped at least, that Aqua had some ideas, because he had nothing to go on.

The next few hours were in silence, and it was with equal parts relief and dread that they crested a rise and found themselves on a broad, tree-covered plateau overlooking a large lake. Across the lake from them was what he had feared.

"There!" he pointed. "There it is! There is Castlevania!"

The dark spires and walls that made up what she could see of the castle from this distance inspired a measure of unease in Aqua. She frowned at it. "And you're telling me that...just sprang up suddenly from ruins? As in it just rebuilt itself in one fell swoop somehow?"

He nodded. "It did. That should give you a rough idea of what we're dealing with. It takes enormous power to resurrect the castle and keep it standing. It's either Dracula, or something or someone every bit as dangerous."

She wished she could be sure of what they were likely to face. Obviously this was something Juste wasn't familiar with, which should make it fall into her territory, but for the life of her she couldn't think of a threat outside of the now-completely-gone Xehanort that could cause this. Clearly there was a ton of power being put into this monstrosity.

Juste urged his horse forward. "Let's go. Keep your eyes open and your senses on alert. As we speak, creatures that serve Dracula are spawning within and around the castle, and they will attack us on sight. We'll go about halfway around the edge of the lake towards the castle, and then we'll let the horses loose. They won't wander far, but leaving them loose allows them to defend themselves easier. We'll walk the rest of the way then."

"Got it," she replied, and followed him as he suggested. As they drew nearer, Aqua felt a surge of darkness coming close. "Juste, Heartless are near!" she called out quickly, and she jumped from the saddle, summoning her blade in tandem. They had gotten close enough to the point Juste planned for anyway.

"And they're not alone!" he said as he jumped to the ground and uncoiled the Vampire Killer. He saw the Heartless teleporting in, but he ignored them as they went straight for Aqua. Instead he focused on the ground in front of him is it rippled and bulged, and after a moment, rotting corpses erupted from the dirt and shambled straight towards him.

"Zombies," he said in disgust. The lowest of Dracula's minions, they were pretty mindless and would target the nearest living being that they could see. They would target Aqua then, but he had to keep them away from her; she had her own problems to deal with. He shouted a warning to her about them, and then got to work.

Aqua ran towards the Heartless mob to head them off, in a similar manner to Juste. At his warning shout, she popped a quick bubble shield up and glanced through the shimmery glass to take a look at the enemies heading towards her companion. She grimaced at the sight of them; they reminded her of the sorts that hung around Halloween Town, and she was quite willing to let Juste deal with those. She turned her attention back to the Heartless as one of them launched itself uncaringly into her shield and was bounced back. She knew that the Heartless would target her primarily, due to her heart and Keyblade, so she had little worry of them wandering off toward Juste instead. That was perfectly fine with her; less to think about.

She immediately launched herself into the fight, casting a few powerful area effects of the thunder and blizzard variety. The combination resulted in an interesting winter storm of sorts, which she took pleasant note of while she fended off a couple attacks from Heartless that weren't killed outright by the storm. She quickly counterattacked, and leaped back when one of the Large Bodies attempted to squish her by jumping on her. This put her directly in the path of a Cycloning Soldier, which she barely managed to block. She was forced to remain blocking as a couple more Heartless charged at her until she managed to throw one back and dodge away from the onslaught.

Juste backdashed to gain some breathing room and swung the Vampire Killer out in a wide arch. The horizontal swing caught five zombies at once, and they exploded into bloodied bits of rotten flesh and vanished. Unfortunately, more simply took their place, and he frowned. Why were they so aggressive? Zombies normally spawned and ran in a straight line toward the nearest target. If said target jumped over them or dodged around them, they kept going without turning around. Yet these zombies were tracking him for some reason. He pulled a Holy Water out of his pocket and flung it. Since they weren't in the castle yet, it did not burst into flame upon contact with the ground, but it did catch a cluster of zombies when the vial shattered, splattering its contents everywhere.

Behind him he heard Aqua spellcasting and decided that that was good idea. A quick burst of power later, he summoned Hydro Storm, and the zombies in front of him went down in a holy fire. He dropped to the ground as the spell came to an end, but the clanking of bones told him that the battle wasn't over yet.

Bones erupted from the ground, and they flew together to form the second weakest of Dracula's minions: the skeletons. Juste darted forward and swung the Vampire Killer at the forming skeleton closest to him, and it was blown apart and scattered around. He quickly switched his attention to the next one, but to his dismay, he could see more already forming. He stood still for a moment to let them get close, and then he pulled his cross out of his shirt and held it high. It began to shine with a bright white light, and he called on his own power while asking for His assistance. He rose off the ground and hovered there.

"Grand Cross!"

He was enveloped in a column of pure, brilliant light as multiple large crosses began to spiral up around him. The skeletons burst into flames, and their bones were scattered around as the holy attack destroyed them instantly. The spell then reached its end, and Juste dropped lightly to the ground, with a whispered thanks for His help. No new monsters appeared then, and he turned to Aqua to see how she was faring.

Finally losing her temper a bit at the seemingly unceasing horde of Heartless around her, she pulled together a large chunk of her combat magic and cast Meteor Crash, slamming the earth below her with her Keyblade as a rain of meteors ravaged the ground around her. After that, any Heartless that miraculously survived the spell were quickly brought to heel with her blade. At last, it seemed there were no more enemies in the vicinity, but she kept her weapon at the ready regardless.

"I am so glad I had Terra teach me that one," she muttered as she downed an ether to replenish her magic.

Juste whistled in appreciation, which caused her to turn and face him. "Impressive." he said as he slowly clapped his hands.

"Heh, thanks, but really I just lost my temper and cast a greater spell than was perhaps necessary," she responded, already criticizing herself. "From what I glimpsed of your own fight, it was rather spectacular as well," she added.

He sketched a bow. "Thank you, thank you." He stood up and smiled. "Don't worry about losing your temper; I used more power than I needed with Grand Cross anyway, simply because I was tired of dealing with them. I really could have gotten by with something less powerful." He took a quick glance around. "I don't sense anything else nearby, so shall we continue on to the castle?"

"Yes. The sooner we get to the source and see what we're dealing with, the sooner we can get rid of it," she replied, ever practical.

"Then let us take what we need from the saddle bags, remove the saddles from the horses, and let them loose. Then we will go in." Juste quickly walked back over to where his horse was standing while anxiously pawing the ground, and pulled the stored food out of the saddle bags. He slipped them into one of his pockets, and the spells on the pocket itself shrank them down to size so they would easily fit. Aqua also emptied out her bags, after a quick question on what to take, and once that was done, they removed the saddles and bridles, dropped them to the ground at the base of a nearby tree, and let the horses go. They cantered off, and Juste turned to face the castle.

The walk around the inlet to the bluff on which the castle sat was quietly. There was no conversation, and no more monsters attacked them. There were also no sounds of nature: no calling birds, no chirping insects, not even the rustle of a small animal darting through the undergrowth.

"Do you hear that?" he asked. "The silence?"

"It's unreal. I've only rarely heard such absolute silence, and even then it was filled with my own voice in the darkness. Even the Realm of Darkness had the sound of the sea to break the quiet," she commented uneasily.

"Even nature abhors the abomination ahead of us. I guarantee you that the reason we're not hearing any wildlife is because there isn't any. They move far away from here when the castle rises. It's also why the horses won't come any closer." He shook his head as they walked closer to the castle. Its massive size loomed over them as they approached, and even though it was about noon, the sunlight dimmed as they neared it. "No matter what time of day, it is always midnight at the castle, and the moon is always full. Around the clock tower and Dracula's throne room, it is the same color as blood. Say your goodbyes to the sun, Miss Aqua; you won't be seeing it for a while."

"How can that even be possible? Constant midnight, and a full moon, no matter how long you are here or what time it should be? Is this some kind of massive temporal rift or something?" She tried to make the logic work in her head. Was it like Twilight Town, where it's always sunset, on a smaller scale? But how could it maintain itself? It had to take a vast amount of power.

"We don't know how it is possible, but it's always the same. We have no other explanation other than it is Dracula's power, even though he has likely not resurrected yet. Young vampires cannot take sunlight at all; exposure to it will set them on fire. Older and more powerful vampires like Dracula can go out in the sun, but they are weaker during the daylight hours and most powerful at midnight.

"The full moon is likely due to him having plenty of werewolves and wargs among his minions, and they are also most powerful under a full moon. If you by chance see a wolf standing up on its hind legs like a human, be careful. Those are the werewolves, and they can transmit their curse to you via bite. Wargs are massive wolves that come straight from hell, and some are capable of breathing fire, so try to keep your distance from them."

"Wonderful. And here I thought Bad Dogs were annoying," she commented sarcastically. Honestly, this world just kept getting better the longer she was exposed to it.

The sun vanished completely as they neared the castle, and Juste stopped for a minute to let his eyes adjust to the sudden change in light. The moon then appeared from the behind the throne room, which allowed him to clearly the see the hands on the large clock tower.

"Why does there always have to be a clock tower." he muttered in annoyance, and then he shook his head and kept walking.

Soon even the moonlight was lost as the castle blocked their view of it, and they came across a wide moat in front of the castle entrance. The drawbridge was down, but he knew it wouldn't stay that way.

"Hurry, before the bridge goes up!" he shouted as he broke into a sprint.

Aqua jumped, startled by his sudden change in pace. She quickly dashed after him, not knowing exactly why.

There was a creak, followed by the groan of wood, and the heavy chains that supported the drawbridge began to move, drawn back by massive crank wheels that he could just see on the other side of the bridge. The bridge itself began to rise, and Juste easily leapt across the small gap and ran to stand just inside the doorway. Only then did he turn to see if Aqua made it.

A few lengths behind Juste, Aqua was later arriving at the bridge than her companion, and could no longer jump it as easily as he did. However, she was nothing if not acrobatic, and she leaped for the rising drawbridge, catching the edge with her hands, then flipping up and over it, sliding down the slope of the wood as it continued rising behind her. She held that momentum until she had made it through the great stone door. She caught her breath before saying, "You might've warned me about that before we got that close."

"Are you all right? I should have warned you about that, but I honestly forgot about it. We're not sure if it's to keep people out... or to keep them in."

"Not entirely useful against skilled rock climbers or those that can fly, but I suppose it works against most people," she commented sardonically. "But if it were primarily to keep people in, why would it start raising as soon as someone comes within sight of it, and not before or after?" Her scholarly musing prevented her from realizing that that had been more or less a rhetorical statement. "I'm fine, though. We ought to keep moving."

Juste gave her a sardonic smile. "If you were out here, alone, and you had just been attacked like we were earlier, and you saw that drawbridge going up, what would you do? Take your chances out here? Or run for the nearest shelter? Believe me, we've encountered other people in this castle before, or rather, what was left of them. The monsters in here have to eat, after all."

He turned away from her and looked through the massive archway in the entrance hall as the drawbridge closed behind them. "No matter. We need to move on." With that, he led the way in the entrance hall.

It was very much like it had been last time, and how Trevor, Christopher, and his own grandfather had described it. Long, with a high ceiling, and a red carpet running straight down the center, the walls were lined with ornate columns and tall windows with ragged red curtains. Candelabras dotted the walls, bathing the area in a warm glow, and just ahead of them, just as he had expected, were the first Wargs.

Large and red eyed, the giant wolves stared down at them, growling threateningly, and Juste gave Aqua a sideways glance. "Ever seen anything like that?"

Aqua took note of the opulent style of the entrance hall, not entirely sure why it was so richly decorated when the castle's owners were unlikely to pay any attention to the rich detail and any possible visitors weren't likely to live long enough to appreciate it either. But she saw as she glanced to the windows that not everything was in as nice a condition as other parts, if the curtains were anything to go by. She caught sight of dark greenery outside, and couldn't help feeling that it didn't really belong. In a place where it's always midnight, home to vampires and other dark creatures, the plants should be barren to reflect its true nature.

Her attention was immediately claimed upon hearing a deep growl down the hall. Her gaze locked onto the great beasts before them. "Can't say that I have..." she answered after hearing Juste's query. Her keyblade rematerialized in her hand, having dropped it during their race to the drawbridge a few moments prior. Confidently, she continued, "But they're nothing we can't handle."

"How right you are." He forward dashed, and with one swing of the Vampire Killer, they wolf went up in a blaze of fire as it howled. It quickly vanished into thin air - few of Castlevania's denizens left a body behind – and Juste turned back to Aqua. "This, however, is just the welcoming committee. Things will get more dangerous as we progress."

"Of course," she agreed, and they proceeded down the hall.

They dispatched a few more Wargs as they went, and then Juste spotted a few bats hanging from the ceiling. "Watch out for bats." he warned. "They don't hit hard, but they are Dracula's eyes and ears, and they will fly down and swoop by when you get close enough. They are really good at knocking you off ledges." He then took care of them with a quick fireball, and then they walked up a few steps and through the doorway to the next room.

The smell of water and the sounds of splashing told him immediately what was below them. They were standing on a walkway, with a staircase leading down to their right, over a large pool of water. That pool of water was full of Mermen.

"Those are Mermen." he said. "They are also fairly weak, though they're a bit stronger than the Wargs. They do hit harder, and they shoot fireballs. There's probably a doorway down there..." He leaned to the side and crouched down until he could see it recessed in the far wall just above the water. "Yes, there it is. It likely leads into the lower levels of the castle, but it's probably blocked off by a switch we can't reach at this time."

"That's quite a few 'probablies'," she commented. "You've been here before, shouldn't you know more definitively?"

Juste shook his head as he stood up. "Sadly no. This castle is born of Chaos, and for that reason, its layout is never the same twice. Some things can be expected. The entrance hall, for example, is always in the same place with nearly the same appearance. Below the castle will likely be a large series of caverns, a waterway, and possibly a battle arena of some kind. Above us will be a chapel of considerable size, a clock tower – which you will loathe once we get there, believe me – and Dracula's throne room. The clock tower and the throne room will also be close to each other. Even those areas though, will be in different locations every time. There will also be new areas that will never be seen again after this."

"That's fantastic," she said, rolling her eyes. "A castle that changes every time it rises from the ashes. I'm really starting to think that nothing in this world is at all easy."

They walked across the walkway, up a few steps, and through the door into the next room. There was an opening in the high ceiling just inside the door, but it was too high to jump. "That's probably a shortcut to the upper levels," he commented, "but we can't reach it now. I'm sure that somewhere in the castle we'll either find another way in to that area, or we'll find an artifact of some kind that allows us to make the jump. This castle is always full of little objects like that."

"Mm yeah, I see what you mean," she agreed, viewing the ceiling herself. "Reminds me of the time a while back now when I visited the dungeons of an evil queen's castle. For some reason she had these pots that if you blasted fire at them, they would bubble and you could use that to give you a huge boost to another level of the place. There were certain places there that you had to be very good at aiming to reach with jumps."

"Sometime, Miss Aqua, when this is all said and done, we are going to have to sit down in comfortable chairs in front of a crackling fireplace and swap stories."

She laughed. "Yes, I quite agree. I'm sure you have nearly as many stories as I do."

"Oh you have no idea." He smiled faintly before he turned serious again. "Once we step down to the floor in here, keep an eye out for zombies. They erupt from the floor without warning in the second half of the entrance, and they will come straight at you. Normally if you just jump over them, they won't turn and pursue you, but the ones we encountered outside the castle did, which has me rather puzzled. I don't understand why their behavior would suddenly change, since they really don't have any intelligence to speak off."

"Is there any reason, or preference, whether to kill them or not?"

"It's faster not to, and their drops aren't any good. That's another thing: every monster in this castle will drop something and sometimes those drops are very good. They don't always drop whatever they have, but if you keep at it, you'll get it sooner or later. As for the zombies though, don't waste your time. They don't have anything useful."

"Do they drop munny? Munny's useful," she questioned. "Heartless often drop things too, but mostly munny. I have no idea where they pick the stuff up, but they always have something. I guess they're both similar in that." It seemed regardless the enemy, they always had some things in common.

"Sometimes they do, in small amounts. However, a more reliable source of money here is..." He lashed out with his whip and destroyed a candelabra that was nearby. A single coin fell to the ground, and he went down and picked it up. "... candles. If your magic is full, the candles drop coins. Don't ask why; it's yet another thing about this place that we don't understand." He went back up the steps to the landing and handed her the coin. "There you are, my lady."

Aqua laughed again, accepting the coin and slipping it into a pocket. "That's just like it is in other worlds. Random breakable objects have munny inside them for no foreseeable reason. But well, every bit helps. Synthesizing gear gets expensive."

"So do the shops here, if we find one."

"By here, you surely don't mean in the castle."

"If I hadn't seen them with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed either. The last time I was here, I kept running into a merchant in various places. I'm not sure if it was the same man every time or if he had several brothers that looked just like him. If it was the same man, then I'd like to know how I would see him in the waterway, and then a day later see him in the keep, complete with his entire inventory.

"Grandfather never saw a merchant in the castle, neither did Trevor or Christopher, so I have no idea if we'll find one again or not."

"That's so strange. I tend to find Moogles on most worlds I visit, but since they're also interplanetary travellers, as well as good merchants and synthesizers, it doesn't usually surprise me. Although sometimes their locations are odd. Sora told me he found one in Christmas Town set way up on a hill near the juncture that led to Halloween Town. It just sort of sat there in the snow. I can't imagine it got much business way up there, so I have no idea why it was there, but so it goes." She chattered about the Moogles, vaguely aware that Juste probably had zero ideas what she was talking about.

There she went talking about the Moogles again. Juste chose not to comment on it. Instead he looked across the room. His feet on the floor below had started the zombies' spawning, and there were several of them trundling across the floor at them. "Shall we?"

"Over or through?" she asked with one eyebrow raised, but didn't wait for an answer as she executed a sliding dash at the end of which she spun in a tight circle, her blade surrounded by ice, slicing into several of the creatures, shattering a few due to the extreme cold of her weapon. The majority of those she hit died instantly. Only those that caught just a bit of her blade survived it, and were slowed even further than their normal gait due to the freezing properties of the Blizzard spell on her Keyblade.

"Well, I was going to say over," Juste replied as he strolled casually down the steps to the floor, "but your method works too." He came up to stand beside Aqua and raised his hand, which caused a wall of water to erupt from the floor and roll across it, flattening the zombies as it went. The two of them walked across the room to the opposite door, with only a few zombies appearing as they went, and those were easily taken out by their weapons.

"So what all do we actually expect to see in this place? I know obviously some things will come as a surprise, but..." Aqua trailed off as they enter the next room.

Juste didn't blink as he looked up at the giant skeleton in front of him. It was tall, so much so that it couldn't stand up straight and still fit in the already high ceilinged room. It was at least twice his own height, perhaps a bit over it. In its right hand it carried a long bone that it obviously intended to use as a weapon of some kind, and the empty sockets where eyes should have been were glowing with bright points of orange flame.

"So soon?" he said out loud. "I wasn't expecting to fight one of the elite this early on."

"We've been wandering the halls for quite a while now, what do you mean 'soon'?" Aqua remarked with mild incredulity. Still, she stared at the humongous skeleton and immediately started analyzing it for weaknesses. "I don't fight bones often. What would be most effective for this?"

Juste kept his eyes on the large skeleton as it lumbered towards him. "This thing will be slow, but it has a long reach and its bone club there will hit very hard, so watch for that. Use anything of a holy nature, most other magic won't have much of an effect. Physical attacks work best though." The monster crept even closer and raised its club to try and smash them with it. "You take one side, and I'll take the other."

Aqua nodded and dashed straight at it as her Keyblade materialized, dropping down and sliding past its club as it swung at her. She delivered a vicious strike to its right knee joint, hoping that if she forced enough pressure onto the joints, they would break loose and limit the giant skeleton's mobility. Per Juste's suggestion, she would stick to physical attacks in this fight, as she had no holy magic of this world and the only light spell she knew was mostly a knockback spell Queen Minnie taught her recently, and she was rather sure that wouldn't affect an enemy this large.

Juste dodged to the left to avoid the bone club as it smashed into the floor, shaking the room and sending dust sifting down from the ceiling. He saw her land a strike against the creature's right knee and decided to do the same, only against the left knee. The skeleton staggered and turned to face him, and he backdashed to escape its large club as it swung at him. He then dashed forward and cast Grand Cross, knowing that the holy attack would deal a fair amount of damage.

Aqua rolled aside as the skeleton turned toward Juste blindly, its club narrowly missing her by chance as she wasn't its current target. She sprinted back into range to land another solid blow against the knee joint before she leapt back out of the way of Juste's Grand Cross, unsure whether his magic would hurt her or not. Her own magic never damaged her as it was a part of her, but she didn't think Juste's magic would be so discerning, even if it was 'holy magic'. She could see it caused a fair bit of damage to the creature, but it was still up and moving-and very focused on Juste. She ran back in again to take yet another heavy swipe at its knee and this time, she heard a satisfying crack as the bone failed to withstand so much concentrated damage. She cartwheeled backwards out of range in case it were to stumble into her.

Juste dropped to the ground as his spell ended, and he had to skip backward quickly to avoid the skeleton's next attack. He heard the cracking of bone and looked over just in time to see Aqua cartwheeling out of the way as the monster's right knee buckled underneath it. The skeleton then turned its attention towards her, but before it could raise its club, he took advantage of its inattention to rush forward and attack its other knee with the Vampire Killer. The whip cracked loudly against the bone, followed a second later by the bone itself cracking as it broke under the blow, sending the monster to its knees.

It stumbled as its weight caused it to be unbalanced from its fall, and the sight of the skeleton trying to move around on disconnected knees was rather comical. Aqua felt her lips twitch into a grin as she rushed at it, sliding past it as she approached. She wanted its unprotected back, because now that it was about five feet or more shorter, she could reach its neck with a jump. The monster continued stumbling about as it tried to attack the two simultaneously, and Aqua took advantage of its distraction, lunging upward and using the skeleton's vertebrae to keep a steady hold on its back. Adjusting her position to give herself a good angle, she drove her Keyblade into the hollow between the skull and the atlas bone of the vertebral column, putting as much force as she could behind the stab as she twisted her blade slightly to make it act as a wedge between the bones.

The skeleton stumbled under Aqua's blow, and it teetered for a moment, but managed to keep itself upright. With it distracted by an attacker on its back, Juste was able to rain down blows on its front side, though he had to dodge its flailing arms as it tried to knock Aqua off. He didn't know what she was trying to do, but she obviously had a plan of some kind, so the least he could do was keep it focused on him. Summoning his magic to him, he began hurling fireballs into its face, which forced it to keep its attention on him. They wouldn't do much damage, but he wasn't concerned with that.

The force of her blade alone wasn't quite enough to pop the bones apart, so she was grateful for Juste's attempts to distract the skeleton as she thought furiously to come up with something further she could do. Fire wouldn't help her, but...ice! That would be perfect! Keeping her blade exactly where it was between the bones, she focused Blizzard magic precisely on the tip of her Keyblade, and forced it to expand rapidly. The magic holding the bones together was not strong enough to combat the sudden block of ice forming in the space between the skull and atlas, and with a pop the skull shot into the air, separated from the body. Aqua pushed off the monster's back as it fell forward.

Juste jumped to the side as the skull came tumbling towards him, and then he had to dash back a good distance as the body collapsed to the floor. He saw Aqua land neatly on her feet behind it, and he had to admire her creativity in disabling their opponent. Normally, they just beat on the elite until the holy power of the whip overcame the dark power keeping them animated.

The skeleton was still twitching, so he called to his companion. "Do you have a shield spell of some kind?"

"Yes," she responded loudly enough for him to hear her. Her usual magic bubble block was enough to repel most physical and magical attacks. She deduced he was going to cast a major spell to finish off the heap of bones in front of her. She lifted her Keyblade at the ready and waited for him to cast. It was best if she paused until he began the spell so it would deflect as much of the magic as possible, in case it were to last longer than a simple block would be able to manage.

He cast his own shield spell, and seeing her at the ready, summoned his power and cast Holy Lightning again. This time, he focused it far more than he normally did, so instead of coming down in multiple arcs, it came down as one beam that forked into two. The air crackled with power, there was a sizzling heat, and with a loud boom! the lightning struck the skull and body, which caused both to shatter into thousands of tiny pieces. Bone shards bounced off his shield, and he stumbled back and lost control of it as his magic levels dropped sharply. He grinned as he saw the results of his work. The skeleton was lying in fragments around the room that slowly crumbled into dust, and there were two large scorch marks on the carpet.

He looked over at Aqua to see her still ducked behind her own shield, one that went completely around her as well as over her. "I think that went well, wouldn't you agree?"

She smiled as she touched down lightly on the ground as her shield vanished. "I'd certainly say so," she confirmed. "It's a good thing this castle isn't owned by anyone who cares for its appearance," she joked, looking at the burns on the floor with amusement, "because otherwise the owners would be very put out."

Juste laughed a lot louder than he normally would; magic drain giddiness, he supposed. "Very true. 'Tis a good thing then that Dracula cares not for his castle's appearance. He might, IF we let him stay on this earth long enough to do so, but that's never a problem." He shook his head. "Anyway, I depleted a lot of magic to destroy that thing, so we should find a sanctuary soon. If the castle stays true to form, one will be very close by."

She raised an eyebrow at his laughter; her joke wasn't -that- funny. "What's a sanctuary?" she questioned.

He managed to bring his laughter under control and made a mental note to try and avoid depleting his magic in such a way if at all possible. "They are rooms within the castle that no monster dare enter. It's said that not even Dracula can go into them. We think they are holdovers from the castle that this one was created from, but they are sacred places, where you will recover your health and energy at a greatly accelerated rate. We can walk in, relax for a few hours, have a quick meal, and be ready to go like we just had a full night of sleep."

"Wow, that's nice. In other worlds we have these points that connect directly to the ways between worlds, and their energy recovers both health and magic almost immediately, but they're few and far between usually. I'm not sure how they work, but they do. And hey, in the event that we don't find one of those rooms right away, you can try one of my ethers. I have far more than I need, and I'm curious to know if they will work the same for you as they do for me, since I bet yours and mine are different since our magic is different," she mused.

Juste pushed himself away from the wall. "I'm sure I'll get to try one at some point. Some of Dracula's Elite require a great deal of magic to bring down, so I would be more than happy to try one in the future. For now though, let's see if we can find a sanctuary." He wobbled a bit as he began to walk towards her, but he quickly had his legs steady again, and he walked past her and through the doorway opposite the one that they had come through.

Aqua watched him wobble with concern, and she kept a close eye on him as they continued, in case she should need to catch him if he stumbled.

They stepped out onto a small landing on a wide spiraling stone staircase. A breeze blew gently up the shaft, carrying with it the smell of water, moss, and rot, which told him very clearly that they were a path to the waterway below. Above them, on the opposite wall was a closed door that was heavily barred, and the heavy beams that locked it glowed with their own power. Across from them however, was what he had hoped to see: a set of ornate double doors, with decorative inlays that glowed with soft blue light.

He pointed to the door above him and waited until Aqua had looked up at it. "That door is locked for now. I'm sure that somewhere in here is a switch that will open it." He pointed down towards the bottom on the staircase. "I'm certain that leads to the waterway, which is the only option left open to us as far as where we can go next." He dropped his hand and stepped off the landing onto the staircase, and then onto the opposite landing in front of the double doors. "This is what we're looking for. All sanctuaries have a door such as this. It changes slightly from castle to castle, but it is always obvious what is behind them." He pushed them open and stepped inside.

She paid his explanations attention and observed the areas they entered with care. As he pointed out the sanctuary doors, she nodded, saying, "I'll keep that in mind." It was hard to say what might happen that would require her to remember that, but she knew it was important regardless.

Inside, they found a room that shouldn't have been possible in such a place as Dracula's castle. It was fairly small, only about the size of Juste's living room, and square in shape. Intricate stained glass windows lined the walls, allowing soft light to filter in. A babbling stream bubbled up from a fountain against the far wall and flowed around a central platform before exiting the room somewhere out of sight. Countless bushes, flowers, and tall grasses grew in abundance: in boxes around the center platform, in crevices in the walls, and on fine metal trellises that were scattered about. More grass, shorter and softer than the rest, filled the path and platform, and it rustled and swayed as they stepped inside. At the end of the platform, just in front of the fountain, stood a statue of the angel Raphael, with its hands outstretched, and it glowed with a warm, yellow light.

"Come here." Juste said softly.

When she followed Juste into the sanctuary, she could hardly believe her eyes. "How can such a place be in here? It's so different from everywhere else we've been!" She felt the aura of the room already relaxing her. "It's beautiful..."

Juste smiled. "It is the magic of these rooms. They appear in whatever form the user would find relaxing. In my previous run through this castle, I was just happy to find a safe, empty place to sit down, so that's the form they took: an empty room. Not all of them have a statue either." He beckoned her closer. "Come, touch the statue." He laid his hand on Raphael's and felt a healing energy flowing into him, banishing his magical drain and the tiredness it caused.

She obediently touched the stone angel and felt a much muted version of the healing Juste received, but she could feel the power within the statue. It soothed her muscles and refilled the small amount of magic she'd used, but as she hadn't suffered any damage nor used very much magic, the properties of the angel were quite reduced for her. Afterward, she sank down onto the soft, cool grass and let the atmosphere of the garden calm her mind as the sound of the water soothed her. She smiled slightly from the feel of it.

The glow from the statue faded, its power consumed for the time being. Later it would replenish itself once they were out of the room so it could be used again later if they needed it. Juste took his hand away from it, whispered a quick prayer of thanks, and then he moved to sit on the grass beside Aqua.

"It is amazing, isn't it?" he asked reverently. "There are several of these througout the castle, and most of them will be near rooms where we run into Dracula's Elite. We've often wondered if there is something... divine behind their placement, but there is no way to know." He smiled faintly. "Walter Bernhard's arrogance certainly continues to work in our favor."

"I definitely like it here, that's for certain. It seems like places like this are few and far between out among the other worlds. There's beauty plenty, of course, but it's usually hard for me to appreciate it due to my missions. I don't have time to rest and just appreciate the traquility of such places even when I do find them." Aqua frowned slightly. Perhaps she would make more of an effort to admire beauty when she next found it. "I'm not sure who you're talking about, of course. Is that the original builder of this place?" she asked almost idly as she gazed at the intricate carving of the angel statue.

"In a way, you could say that." Juste replied as he pulled some jerky out of one of his many pockets. "Earlier, when I told you about Dracula's origins? Walter Bernhard was the vampire whose soul Mathias stole. He had come to this area a century or so before. No one knows how old he was at the time – vampires gain in strength as they age – but what was known was that he was the holder of the powerful artifact called the Ebony Stone." He took a bite of the jerky and chewed for a moment. "The Ebony Stone was capable of cloaking the entire area around it in a perpetual night, and it also made its master nigh on invicible. Many tried to defeat Walter; none of them succeeded.

"Walter though, soon grew bored with his eternal life and decided to make things more interesting by challenging humans to try and hunt him. He achieved that by kidnapping whom they held most dear and holding them hostage. If they failed – and they all did, he either killed them or on rare occasions turned them. He allowed one of the few survivors, one Rinaldo Gandolfi, to live and run a shop outside the castle to make things easier for the hunters, and he also set up safe rooms in his castle, so the hunters could take rest breaks when needed. All of this was done in an attempt to make the game more fun before its inevitable end – he was invicible and he knew it.

"When Walter was defeated by Leon, his castle crumbled into ruin and remained that way until the 1400s, which is when Dracula summoned parts of it to create his own castle, the one we are currently in. That, we believe, is where the Sactuaries came from."

"So you think the leftover magic from Walter's castle was pulled in when Dracula rebuilt it (more or less)? Sounds quite probable to me," Aqua replied. She glanced at the statue again. "So on another subject, is this angel special at all to your religion, or is it just a regular angel? I know what angels are, of course, but I don't know anything about their ranks or names or if there are any special ones or if they're all equal, et cetera."

Juste looked over his shoulder at the statue. "This is the archangel Raphael," he said as he turned back around to face his audience, "he is the patron of travellers, physicians, blind people, and many others. He is strongly associated with healing, since in the Gospel of John, he is described as stirring the waters in the healing pool at Bethesda." He turned back to the statue and smiled at it. "I think he is a fitting guardian for these safe rooms."

"I would agree," she said with a smile, before questioning again. "An archangel, so like a leader over other angels? Are there many of those?"

"Yes, I suppose you could call them leaders. They are higher ranked angels, and they work very closely with God and carry out His tasks here on Earth. There are seven of them: Gabriel, Michael, Uriel, Raphael, Sealtiel, Jegudiel, and Barachiel. Sometimes in my faith, an eighth, Jerahmeel, is included with them as well."

"Those are rather odd names," she commented, a bit bemused. Even though she travelled to so many places and heard so many different names, she still thought that some of those angels had the strangest names she'd heard in a while. Then she shrugged and dug around in one of her pockets to find something to eat. She found some flatbread wrapped in a small waterproof bag, in case one of her potions broke, and broke a piece off to eat.

Juste smiled. "I would have to agree to some point. Gabriel and Michael are common boy names in most parts of the world, and Raphael also appears as a child's name off and on. The others though.. I have never seen a child with any of those names. I actually would like to name a son Gabriel, myself, but Lydie has her heart set on Richter, and it's easier to do what she wants." He laughed lightly.

"Is Richter a common name here?" She rather doubted it but she might as well ask. He was always so happy to talk about his family, and she couldn't say she minded hearing him speak with such enthusiasm. She smiled again.

"No, it is a German name that means 'judge'. I am not sure where Lydie learned it from, but I do like it."

"I see," she responded, though she wasn't familiar with German at all. She'd been to a few worlds where German was the primary language, but due to yet another traveller perk, her speech automatically assimilated to speak the world's primary tongue. She couldn't tell the difference herself, though, unless she had actually learned the language outside of her travels. She had done so with Japanese, as English was her first language, and she knew some Spanish, but if she wasn't fluent in the world's language, something about crossing into the world's atmosphere affected the parts of her brain responsible for speech and hearing, as well as reading where applicable, allowing her to interact fully with the world's inhabitants without needing to learn a few dozen languages.

Juste pulled out his pocket watch. "Dear me, we're been in here for over an hour already. Are you ready to move on?"

"Sure." She replaced the bread she hadn't eaten in the bag and returned it to her pocket, dusting her hands off afterward. Then she pushed herself to her feet. She had to admit, she'd miss the atmosphere of the sanctuary, but they really did need to get moving. There was an oncoming tide of darkness to stop.

Chapter 3 -- Chapter 5
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