Alucard (ancientprince) wrote in thegalaxy, @ 2016-07-12 13:41:00 |
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Entry tags: | !locale: naboo, !locale: umbara, alucard, glasya ren |
point a gun at the mirror
Who: Glasya & Alucard
What: Scarred enemies regroup.
When: morning
Where: Umbara to Naboo
Rating: T for Alucard making threats.
Glasya walked through the blackness of Umbara, a shadow amongst shadows. He sensed Alucard's presence even before he stepped off of the Wraith. The voices had been quieter of late -- manageable, almost, since he had at last begun to heal -- but the nearer he drew to the vampire, the louder they became. They and their host resented their new master, who had forced himself upon them all through trickery and deceit. It was a sentiment to which Glasya could somewhat relate. It was similar, though not precisely equal, to a situation from which he hoped to free himself, and afterward, perhaps, his captive as well. He frowned at the thought of what might come after that.
The ruin loomed before him. The tree beneath which he had rested stretched out its branches toward him, a black canopy beckoning him near. Memories rushed unbidden over him. He clenched his fists until he felt his nails dig small crescents into his palms. He kept his steps as steady and deliberate as the beating of his heart. He stopped a pace from the ruin's doorway, his boots resting on crumbled paving stones.
"Alucard," he called. "Come out."
The silence of the ruins lingered for a long moment after Glasya’s call. The air was empty of any sign of life besides his own. It was as though a poison had crept into the woods and created a rot that spread from the tumbledown walls in a great circle of despair and death. Only the looming trees and fronds of undergrowth remained, though these, too, were marred. Many bore the scars of a battle fought nearby. Some were branded by crumbling crusts of browned blood.
From this hollowed out forest, a shadow slowly emerged. Skeletal and covered in matted fur, the hellhound crept slowly, painfully into Glasya’s presence. Its eyes were dull, its coat dirtied charcoal rather than black silk, and its bones showed like broken branches through thin skin. Alucard had killed, but he had not consumed a single drop of blood. If he could have made himself a dried out corpse, as he had been in Arthur’s dungeons, he might have been able to resist Glasya’s control for sheer lack of ability to move. His lips lifted from his fangs in a silent snarl, his anger at having been disturbed clear.
Glasya's brow arched. He studied the husk of a beast before him, a poor reflection of the sentient darkness the creature had seemed in their last meeting. He moved closer, unafraid, even as the strangers in his head grew more restless. "You look unwell," he said. "I didn't take you for the sort to go on a hunger strike. Did I overestimate you?"
You do not know me, a voice hissed in Glasya’s mind. The vampire took what small advantage he could, the doorway between him and the Knight of Ren open wide enough that he could project thoughts and words, like reaching through the bars of a prison, though he could not escape from behind their cold touch. Even in his desperation, Alucard was proud. An echo of the boy he’d been in the Sultan’s keeping rang in his own mind. He’d once starved himself in the Ottoman Turks’ opulent cage, a silent protest from a child who could do little more for himself or his people than disobey. They’d beaten him, and worse, but he’d endured until his captors had left him to his own devices. It was one thing for a hostage to die of his own stubbornness, quite another to contribute personally to his untimely end. Alucard had taken the small victory, an affirmation of his pride if nothing else.
He was older, now, and wiser in his choices. Six hundred years ago, he’d acted on a whim, with little thought to the consequences of his actions. He’d still believed that God would right the universe, if only he prayed hard enough and was a good, faithful son. He knew better, now. God would not save him, only leave him to his own actions, and the burden of what came after. Free will was a curse, but better than the curse of having one’s will stolen away. If only he’d had a little more time to exercise his choice to render himself of no use to his new captor.
"Perhaps I don't," Glasya said. His words echoed in Alucard's mind, traveling lightning-quick across the bond they shared. It was a blade that cut both ways; already the knight felt the pain that came with employing that connection, that welcoming of outside spirits in his own head. He embraced the pain and merely shrugged. "But we have time enough together now, don't we? I think we'll learn a great deal about one another before the end."
He turned, gesturing to the ship that lay beyond. "We're going to Naboo. Do you have strength enough to take a less noticeable form when we arrive?"
The hound flinched. Glasya’s intrusion was a more effective reprimand than any blow. The early years with Abraham had seen similar pain as master and servant had tested each other’s, and the seals’, limits. Alucard had been a different creature then, more arrogant and restless, his madness barely contained. He’d wanted to know that Abraham was worthy. Glasya, on the other hand, he wanted nothing to do with.
Unhappy with your prize? Despite the knight’s reprisal, Alucard’s biting tone was filled with hatred and scorn. Do you not wish to tell the story of how you poached a great beast on a distant planet? Or maybe you’re afraid to take the leash of your new dog. Alucard could change, but it would do little to make him less noticeable in his current state, and Glasya had not commanded him to give a straightforward reply. With Integra, this exchange would have been a game. Alucard wondered if he could have thrown off Glasya’s control had his true master ordered him to be rid of the Knight of Ren, or if the seals and the binding would have torn him apart in their battle against each other.
The vampire's seething hate echoed loudly in Glasya's mind. It was a distraction, though not an unfamiliar one given his training and current allegiance. He heaved a sigh, as though exhausted from dealing with a petulant child, and began to move toward the comfort of his ship.
"If you want to look like a starving cur, so be it," Glasya said. "Who knows? It might even help. Fools love a charity case, and I'm taking you there to deal with exactly their kind. Now. Board the Wraith and sit calmly while I get things underway."’
Hackles raised, Alucard obeyed. He could do nothing else, given such a clear command. Glasya’s little droid waited within the ship, an entirely too cheerful creature, and Alucard shot it a glare. The gesture had no discernable impact. It left Alucard feeling more hollowed out than before. Was he so destitute that even the indifference of a machine cut at him? He found a dark corner and tucked himself into it. The dull gleam of his eyes shone eerily out from the shadows. He made no remark, only watched for Glasya as his mind wandered to the so-called fools he was apparently supposed to set upon.
The BB-unit whirred around the black dog, giving the creature as wide a berth as the space allowed. It wheeled merrily as its master's footsteps echoed in the corridor, approaching and passing them on his way to the cockpit. In the distance came the sound of the gangplank closing with a hydraulic hiss. Glasya glanced down to the vampire only briefly, beckoning him follow, not turning to see if he had.
"Kylo Ren still sees fit to exile me to this planet," he said. His words echoed along the neural pathways they now shared, etching each syllable into their minds as with a bloody needle. "So you're going to stay there for a while on my behalf. Find someone or something that will satisfy him the work is done. He is particularly entranced with the rift. See if you can discern something of its nature or cause."
So I am to be his errand boy in your place? The hound shadowed Glasya without so much as click of his claws against the ship’s floors. He shielded himself as best he could against the harsh touch of the other man’s consciousness, sacrificing his familiars to absorb a modicum of the pain in his stead. His mind had not been so loud in decades. The cacophony of souls within him thrashed against Glasya’s control like the sea against a cliff face. It might have been easier to give in, but what purpose would that serve? Alucard’s honor demanded more.
What am I to do with this information? And where will you be while I complete your task?
"I will be away," Glasya said. Though certainly never far. He looked down to the black hound, a wry smile twisting his lips. His words threaded between speech and thought, not alternating so much as completely intertwined.
"You are to share the information with me, and act to capture -- alive and capable of cooperating with us -- anyone or anything you believe to have a connection to the rift. We already have one Force user we believe is tied to it. But frankly I don't believe she is responsible for it, and we will need something else to bring him when he has reached the same conclusion."
Once in the cockpit, Glasya settled into the pilot's seat. His hands flew over the controls, the Wraith lifting at the touch of his hands. The navigator's chair was empty, unneeded thanks to the BB-unit wheeling to its station toward the back of the cockpit. The knight glanced over one shoulder to his unwilling companion.
Will you miss me? he teased, a glint in his cold blue eyes.
Like a festering wound, was the hound’s reply. Already, Alucard was working out how best he might evade Glasya’s instructions. They were thorough. The man knew Alucard better than the vampire cared for. He had left little room for negotiation or disobedience. Still, there were a few cracks through which a technicality might slip …
What do you hope to gain from this? Alucard pressed. Better men than you have died screaming at my hand, and for less cause than you have given me. The fields of the impaled still writhed within him, the souls of his enemies devoured in the early days of his transformation into the undead, days that had been marked by an insatiable hunger. What could be worth incurring my wrath?
It took a moment for Glasya to respond. What he saw in Alucard's mind intrigued him: long spears with human bodies upon them, spitted like animals over a fire. Something so unknown to him, so foreign, was to Glasya a draw he could not entirely ignore. But he shook himself from his reverie long enough to ready the ship for the jump to hyperspace, and looked down to the vampire.
"From this task in particular I hope to gain something that will convince Kylo Ren of my continued loyalty," he said. "From your service in a more general and long-term sense, you're going to help me kill him."
Alucard went still. His silent gaze laid upon Glasya as might a sculpture’s, heavy and unmoving. Beneath the noise of his familiars, Alucard’s mind played out the possibilities. He had loathed traitors in life, yet the Hellsing journals spoke of his traitorous nature. The truth was that Alucard held a twisted sense of honor, one that he recognized had been warped through the years from what it had once been, yet held tightly. It was one of the traits that separated him from the ravenous worms who called themselves vampires, but were nothing more than glorified moving corpses.
He might have helped Glasya be free of Kylo Ren for his own purposes, once upon a time, if only to remove a poison from the universe and replace it with one more easily contained. Now, he had nothing but loathing for the man and his designs.
The hound’s shape blurred. Shadows climbed upward from the cabin’s deck, and gradually took shape. His hair robbed of all color, his skin like bleached bone, Alucard towered above Glasya, his lips twisted in disdain above the high collar of his black leathers, his features a death mask cast in judgment.
“You’ve chosen the wrong weapon with which to destroy your Caesar,” he cautioned. “If I were you, I would be careful where I leave it. Accidents have been known to happen when children play with guns.”
Glasya arched a brow, its curve matched in the quirk at the corner of his lips. His silhouette was framed by the blackness outside, shot through with long white streaks of passing stars. Naboo approached, and Glasya found himself grateful for it.
"I have no intention of leaving you anywhere," he said. "At times we may be worlds apart, but we are linked now. Your feelings on the matter do not enter into it. When the time is right you will be at my side, and you will turn your strength against my fool of a master. I suggest you take the intervening time to prepare yourself for that eventuality."
"I suggest that you prepare yourself, Glasya Ren. I can do far worse than consign you to death." Alucard prided himself on never leaving ghouls behind, but, for Glasya, he would gladly make an exception. Or perhaps it would be better to consume the man's soul, and leave it to his legions of familiars to torment for the long centuries to come. Alucard’s imagination was a perilous place. Glasya’s effigy died a hundred tortured deaths in the vampire’s mind, and lived a hundred tormented lives.
“Your ambition will be your undoing.”
"Or your insipid lectures will be," Glasya said. "Honestly, I'd expected someone of your age and experience to be far more interesting, but I'm starting to think your topics of conversation are limited to sulking and threats."
The spaceport loomed in the distance. Glasya circled it, descending at its back, toward the lesser-used landing pads. They were ill-kept, plant life and signs of nesting animals gathered around their edges. They would attract far less attention here in this dilapidated industrial area. Glasya looked up to the white-haired creature, faint amusement playing on his lips.
"Anything else you'd like to get off your chest?"
“How typical of the young to ignore the warnings of their elders.” Alucard shifted the shape of his clothing to something less reminiscent of a Victorian asylum, and moved toward the hatch. “I will see you spitted upon a pike, Glasya Ren, and you will know me as my enemies did long ago. I imagine that it will give you something to talk about when you join them in my legions.”