The preparation had taken three days.
I stood in the central chamber of Castlevania, watching as Isaac made his final checks. Across from him, Archmaester Marwyn adjusted the chains on his neck, the bronze links of his collar catching the torchlight. The archmaester had been fascinated when I'd extended the invitation, his thirst for knowledge and childlike wonder clear in his character.
We stood in the heart of Castlevania, and it took the other man everything he had not to drop to the floor drooling at the complicated mechanical and rune magic contraption that funneled the power and allowed the cube to perform interplanetary translocation.
"You're certain the castle can survive the journey?" Marwyn asked, not for the first time. His weathered face bore the expression of a man who'd spent his life studying magic yet never quite believing in it until now as he looked around.
"The Doom's residual energies will test us," I admitted, running pale fingers along the ancient cube of the castle's heart. "But Castlevania has weathered worse. Our home realm had more dangerous beings. Valyria's corruption is… intense, yes, but finite compared to hell."
Isaac remained silent, his dark eyes fixed on the magister. I had not said as much, but as with Isaac, little needed to be said. My trust in Marwyn was little, but his taste and desire for magic drew me to him. It was something a younger Dracula could understand, and some part of me saw him as a like-minded person, especially with the knowledge that he could never pose a threat to me.
The castle thrummed beneath us, responding to the magic building in its foundations. I could feel it through my connection to the structure, a vast consciousness that was not quite alive but no longer merely stone and mortar. Castlevania remembered every place it had been, every battlefield it had graced with its shadow.
After today, it would remember Valyria.
"Marwyn," I said, turning to the archmaester. "Once we arrive, you will remain within the castle's protective wards until I've assessed the environment. I can survive exposure to the Doom's taint. You cannot."
The older man's jaw tightened, but he nodded. He was practical enough to know when pride would kill him, despite his no doubt burning desire to explore.
I turned back to the cube, then took a step back from it as it came to life with a glowing hum. The air grew thick, electric, as reality began to bend around us.
Through my connection to Castlevania, I fed power into the spell. Not my own reserves, considerable as they were, but the castle's accumulated might. Centuries of absorbed magic, of conquered territories, of blood spilled on its stones. Magic that the castle had siphoned from this plane of existence, from the cold winds that flowed from the land of always winter, from the comet that had hung in the sky for hours. All of it focused into a single purpose: to tear through space itself and emerge thousands of miles away.
The chamber exploded with light.
Blue lightning, the color of concentrated magical energy, arced from wall to wall. It crawled across the rune circles, across mechanical wheels that began to spin and churn, the electrical energy flowing and sparking everywhere, following their own patterns with hungry intensity. I felt the castle lurch, felt it tear free from its moorings in reality like a ship pulling anchor.
Marwyn staggered, clutching at a pillar for support. Isaac remained steady, even if he tensed slightly to better ground himself, but unlike the duo I was not human. Instead, I stood straight, with my arms spread wide, embracing the raw power coursing through the chamber, through me, through everything.
The world fractured.
For a heartbeat, we existed nowhere. In the space between spaces, where distance had no meaning and time flowed like water. I glimpsed things in that void, shapes that should not exist, colors that had no name, the vast machinery of reality laid bare. Then I focused on the image from the mirror, those blackened spires, with smog-choked skies, and I willed it. All of a sudden, it was over. Castlevania landed.
The impact shook the entire structure. Stone groaned, supports creaked, and for a terrible moment I thought we'd miscalculated. But the castle held, just as I knew it would.
The chamber was silent. Only the sound of Marwyn's heavy breathing could be heard, his eyes wide open, mouth once more flapping like a fish out of water. The sight brought a soft smile to my face. I turned to Isaac to see him no better composed, which made sense, during the last travel, he had been in his wing of the castle. Now, his eyes were just as wide, no doubt the surprise at glimpsing the space between worlds shocking, but he recovered smoothly, and his heartbeat remained calm.
"Let us see where the castle has brought us."
I called out as I walked out of the chamber, stepping into my study to the echo of two footsteps following behind me. The chamber closed shut behind us the moment the last person stepped out.
The darkness gave way to light from the windows in my study, but this was not the clean white of snow. This was the sickly red-orange glow of a sky choked with ash and fire.
This was Valyria.
I strode to the nearest window and looked out upon the Doom.
The landscape was a nightmare rendered in stone and flame. Broken towers jutted from the earth like the ribs of some massive beast, their black stone still bearing the scars of dragonfire. Rivers of molten rock cut through the ruins, their heat so intense I could feel it even through the castle's wards. The sky roiled with perpetual storm clouds, pregnant with ash and worse things. I could hear beats in them, wing beats.
And the magic.
It hung in the air like a physical presence, so thick and corrupt it was visible as a miasma that clung to everything. This was power without purpose, without direction, raw magical energy that had been twisted, broken, and left to fester for four centuries.
"Magnificent," Marwyn breathed, appearing at my side. His face was pressed against the window like a child at a bakery.
"And absolutely lethal," I said casually, noting the concentration of both the magic and the miasma in the air. Alone, it would probably kill an unprotected man in minutes.
"This is not mere ambient magic. It's actively hostile." I could feel it pressing against Castlevania's wards, probing for weakness. Which made me curious. Had anybody ever managed to get this deep into Valyria? I'm certain at least one erstwhile adventurer must have made landfall. I felt a push against the wards once more. Sheer magical saturation or something more sinister?
Isaac finally made his way and joined us, his expression unreadable as he surveyed the devastation. "The Valyrians played with forces they didn't understand. This is the price of hubris."
"Perhaps," I mused. "Or perhaps they understood perfectly and did it anyway." I turned from the window. "Isaac, you're with me. Marwyn, you will remain here and begin your observations from safety. If something happens to us, Castlevania knows the way home." I ignored the part that home to Castlevania was probably Alucard's side. That was the one person the castle recognized as much as it did me.
The archmaester looked like he wanted to argue. It was easy to agree when we were still south of the Wall, but now that we were here, I could see the urge—that intense desire to learn, to know what happened here—peek through. However, in the end, his sense won out. He let out a heavy sigh as he spoke.
"I'll stay behind, but be careful. There have been rumors among the colonies close by of things that survived the Doom. They do not leave the ruined peninsula, but they're present."
I kept silent. Instead, I stared at the archmaester for long seconds until he began to fidget on the spot before I finally smiled.
"You'll come with us."
"W-What?" Marwyn stuttered out in complete shock and surprise, and I felt my lips curving into something that wasn't quite a smile. I blame the original Dracula's influence.
"Lord Dracula's initial refusal was a test," Isaac supplied. "He wished to see if your desire to learn and knowledge would override your common sense. It is good to see that it has not."
Marwyn turned from me to Isaac and finally back to me. I shook my head ruefully at the man and began to walk away.
"Prepare him, Isaac, and meet me at the entrance," I said as I descended through the castle to the main entrance while Isaac guided the still-surprised archmaester toward the vault.
The main doors of the castle groaned open in hesitation as I walked up to them, revealing a courtyard that had somehow found purchase on a plateau overlooking a shattered valley. Below me, the ruins of what had once been the greatest empire in the world sprawled in broken magnificence.
The moment I stepped beyond the wards, the full force of the Doom hit me, and I felt my eyes widen.
Chaos.
That was why Valyria fell, why its people lay sundered and its magic had curdled like milk. The Valyrians had tapped into the realm of chaos. It was not something that was spoken of in the series. Yet chaos was something that Dracula had dabbled in, drawn power from as much as blood. He was not as intricately linked to it as I remembered his game counterpart being, but he had supped from its chalice.
The air itself seemed to burn with that same chaotic and corrupted magic. It clawed at exposed skin, tried to work its way into lungs and eyes, and any opening it could find. For a mortal man, it would have been agony followed swiftly by death.
But I was no mortal man. I had walked in that realm, not this shattered remnant of a civilization that had peered into the abyss. It suddenly made sense why the castle landed here. On this world. It had been drawn here. Dracula had drawn from chaos while building Castlevania, so in more than one way, they were intricately linked. This world must've been a beacon, yet this new discovery brought about a new question: if I landed on Planetos because of Valyria, why did I land on the other side of the world?
I pondered for a few seconds, but it was not a question I had immediate answers to, so I discarded it. I would get my answers anyway, now that I was here.
I took a deep breath and did something I had been wary of. I touched upon the magic that littered the air. The twisted, chaotic magic that lay hidden in the smog of poisonous gases. I didn't draw it into myself instead, i felt it out, carressed it with senses almost as fine as skin, not to use it but to understand. It fought me, wild and undirected, but I had Dracula's untold centuries of experience bending power to my will. Slowly, I began to perceive the patterns beneath the disorder.
A second later, I heard the doors of the castle open behind me, as well as footsteps that trailed before ending at my side. I let go of the tainted magic and felt it slip free from my fingers in joy at being unconstrained. The ease with which I had done what I did was unnerving.
"This is not random," I said aloud before glancing behind me. Isaac and Marwyn stood nearby, both wearing full-face bronze masks with valves. I recognized them. They were rebreather devices Dracula had invented when Lisa had shown interest in seeing the depths of the sea. They were mostly mechanical, but they had also been enchanted to be more efficient. The mechanism in the mask filtered the air physically, while the enchantment neutralized outside forces such as the extreme pressure of the sea depths. The magical corruption in the air should apply as well.
Over that, they wore heavy cloaks as a redundant measure just in case the masks failed or were knocked off. The cloaks were heavy leather treated with volcanic ash and could be sealed around them with straps and rendered fast.
"What do you mean?" Marwyn asked.
"The Doom. It's not just residual destruction. Something is maintaining it. Magic even as thick and powerful as this would diffuse, even constrained to this ruined peninsula, after 400 years, especially with how the rest of the world has been low on it. Yet I believe the Freehold has been as magically potent and filled as it was when the Doom occurred."
Where Marwyn marveled at the knowledge, Isaac's attention was more focused. His hand moved to his jeweled dagger, and he asked, "Maintaining it for what purpose?"
"That," I said, beginning to walk toward the ruins below, "is what we're here to find out." There was a particularly large manse, beautifully built and surprisingly well-preserved compared to the ruins that littered the landscape. With any luck, I would find answers, or at least the beginning of one, there.
I stepped onto the path that led to the manse and was interested in the feel of the so-called dragon roads that made up the path. Broken and partially destroyed by the Doom as they were, yet enough of their structure remained for me to recognize them. It seemed like another set of fan theories was true. The Valyrian Empire was heavily influenced by Rome.
As we walked down the broken path, I came upon my first curiosity. A man. A dead one, at least. He was lying on his face, but that was not the curious part. That was not what had drawn me to him. I had passed multiple bodies already, although they could hardly be recognized as such. Most were fragments of bones or imprints of figures forever flash-burned into the ground.
What truly drew me to this particular corpse was how fresh it was. I walked up to the figure, and with a nudge of my foot, I rolled the body over, revealing a face that was partially covered with some sort of primitive gas mask. A half plate that had rents and tears in it, as something ripped its way past the steel breastplate and into the man's chest to relieve him of his organs.
Yet even more interesting than the dead body was the symbol on the plate. A golden lion on a crimson field.
"Wait, is that a Lannister man-at-arms?" Marwyn exclaimed in surprise as he and Isaac caught up to me.
I ignored the question. Instead, I looked in the direction the corpse had been heading and spotted more fallen and broken forms, all scattered like they had been thrown apart by something incredibly violent. If I didn't think there were monsters here already, now I knew.
How fun.