Learning not to get attached was a part of Audrey's life. 

It was not a healthy way to live. But after having lost her home, it was the only way she could survive. So bidding goodbye to the Speakers; it was not that hard. Besides Sypha was still there with her. At least she had one person there she was close to. And a degree of familiarity would be needed on the journey they were going to undertake. 

She paced outside the old, rundown and now half-destroyed house where the Speakers had been staying. 'Should I go speak with him or not? He would not drink my blood, would he? He does not seem frightening to me. Maybe I should just go.' 

As though it was nudging her, the Phoenix in Audrey's soul pushed her ahead. She leaned against the remnants of what had been the door of the house, watching Alucard trace something in the sand. 

"Alucard, they called me," He suddenly spoke. Audrey tensed up. He must have detected her presence. 

"The opposite of you," Alucard continued, staring at what he had traced in the sand. 

"That's a nice drawing," Audrey said, slowly walking toward him. "So that's Dracula?"

Alucard hummed in acknowledgement. "My mother did not like that. She hated the idea that I might define myself by him, even when I was opposing him. She loved us both, enough that she wanted us to be our own people. Living our own lives. Making our own choices. And so here I am. Choosing to honor my mother by killing my father."

He looked up at Audrey, his amber eyes filled with emotion. "Is this balance then? Will this killing act bring peace to the world?"

"Everybody exists in balance with nature. Even creatures like you and I. Your father, Alucard, has destroyed that balance. Even now, I can feel the effects of what he has done and what will happen if he continues," Audrey pressed a hand to her heart, tapping it. As she did so, golden sparks appeared out of thin air before disappearing. "The Phoenix will be your ally in whatever is going to happen."

Magic was a rare commodity. People had stopped utilising it fully, only using its powers to complete dangerous rituals. Magic was angry and suffering. Magic needed balance. Nature needed balance. Nature needed Magic. Magic needed Nature. And the Phoenix was at the centre of it all. 

Audrey held out her hand. "At least you can rely on me to heal you when the situation arises."

"So, the legends are true then," Alucard stated. He grasped her outstretched, bare hand with his gloved one. His grip was firm yet a little bit softer than she had expected. "The Phoenix can heal with tears."

Audrey smiled as they let go of each other's hands. Those old legends never presented the true extent of what the Phoenix's powers could be. "Not just tears, Alucard."

Alucard looked curious, but she remained silent. The less people knew about the Phoenix, the better. It was right then Sypha and Trevor returned. 

"So, how do we proceed?" Sypha asked. She looked at Audrey, who could only offer her a shrug in return.

"Have the Speakers left?" Alucard said. 

"Yeah," Trevor answered. 

"I'm sorry," Alucard looked at Sypha. "In success, you will see them again soon, in far happier circumstances."

"See," Sypha pointed at the half-vampire, sending a half glare towards Trevor. "He knows how to be nice." After a pause, she continued to speak. "Is it true then? The castle can travel somehow? We know the stories, but sometimes it is hard to separate myth from truth." 

"Tell her about Dracula's castle, Alucard. Her day can't get any more ruined,"  Trevor sounded frustrated. He walked over to one of the wooden crates, rummaging through it for a bottle of alcohol. Audrey had the slightest feeling that there were going to be many arguments in their merry little band's future.

"Dracula's castle moves. How to describe?" Alucard was deep in thought. "It travels without moving. It appears at locations as if...well, as if by magic." 

"There has to be some way to trap it," Sypha said. Then she looked at Audrey. "You wouldn't happen to know something, would you?" 

Audrey sighed and shook her head. "Not really. Whatever magic the castle uses is very different from the magic I know of." 

"Then, how do we start?" Sypha said.

"I want to go home," Trevor still sounded frustrated and now tired on top of that. 

"Have you been drinking again?!" Sypha glared at him. 

"Some chance," Trevor replied, standing up straight. "But no, I want to go home. The old Belmont estate."

"I was under the impression it was destroyed," Alucard said. "Villages, pitchforks and torches, that sort of thing. 

Audrey nodded in agreement. "That's what I have heard too."

"It was," Trevor looked down. It was his home, his home that he had lost. "But the value of the old house wasn't the house itself. It was what was underneath it. The Belmont Hold. Our family library and trove."

"The collected knowledge and material of generations of Belmonts who fought the creatures of the night," Alucard murmured. "That sounds interesting. If it survives."

"If there are solutions to the problems of finding and killing Dracula," Trevor spoke firmly, sounding more determined. "They are in the Hold."

"You're guessing though," Alucard pointed out.

"I am guessing," Trevor admitted. "I can't read or understand magic. But my family stored everything they found, including books of magic and whatever other weird stuff they came across. I just can't do anything with it. But you three can."

"Fortunate indeed, then," Alucard was smirking as he spoke. "That I chose not to kill you and eat you, Belmont."

"And that I decided against gutting you, flaying you, and turning you into shoes Alucard."

"Such a merry band we are," Sypha shook her head. 

Audrey agreed completely. "This will be fun."

"Audrey and I will find us a covered wagon and horses," Sypha continued, sounding irritated and annoyed. "If you two can manage not to kill each other while we are gone." 

"Oh please," Alucard looked offended. "We are not children."

"Why do I find that hard to believe?" Audrey whispered to herself. Next to her, Sypha rolled her eyes. 

Such a merry band indeed.

The wagon was found and as the sun began its descent from the sky, they departed from the city. The wagon was not exactly comfortable, but compared to a year ago, when Audrey was not with the Speakers and trying to figure out what to do with her newfound powers after being chased out of her village, the wagon felt almost luxurious. While Trevor and Sypha sat in the front, manning the wagon, she sat in the back with Alucard and whatever supplies they had managed to gather. 

It was going to be hard to sleep though, especially when her nerves were not letting her. This was a dangerous journey to be going on. And even after a year, Audrey was still not as confident with her powers as she would like. She looked at her hands. They were pale and plain, except for the one jagged scar she had gotten as a child. She imagined fire on her fingertips. Within seconds, her index finger lit up in golden-red flames. 

Audrey twirled her hand around. The flames moved with her. 'What more can you do, Phoenix? What more will you be capable of? What more do you want to do?' 

"Hmm, so that is the mythical Phoenix fire," Alucard remarked. "I never thought that I would get to see it."

She looked up at the sound of his voice. "Now you are seeing it. And it is not as mythical as you think it to be."

"Is it not then? The legends say this is the origin of the so-called eternal flame."

"There is no such thing as the eternal flame," God, she hated that legend. Even the Speakers had believed it. "Phoenix Fire is tied to a life force. If I set something on fire, that fire does not die unless I wish it to or unless..."

"You die." Alucard finished her sentence. His amber eyes were oddly grim. 

"But I won't. Die. A Phoenix lives for a very long time. So," Audrey dropped her voice to a low whisper, pointing towards a bickering Trevor and Sypha in the front. "I will be alive much longer than they or any other human. Maybe even you."

"Like a vampire, then."

"Something like that."

That signalled an end to their conversation. Audrey had never learned how to keep conversations going. That had been a trait she had as a child and it still had not gone away. It was the one thing that the Phoenix had not been able to give her. 

The rest of the ride passed in silence, though at the front of the wagon, the bickering did not stop. 

*

Nightfall in Wallachia felt dangerous. Nightfall in a forest in Wallachia even more so. But the wagon had been forced to stop as it got too dark to travel. The temperature had dropped. As the horses grazed on nearby bushes and grass that had not been buried beneath the snow, the four sat around a fire. Well, three in reality. Trevor was laying down and dozing off, but it also looked like he was paying attention to the conversation. 

Audrey lightly hummed as she let her fingers dance in the air, the flames of the fire moving with them. One ear was focused on Sypha and Alucard's conversation and the other listening to their surroundings.

"I'm still not completely clear on why you don't catch fire in the daylight," Sypha was saying. 

"I'm half-human," Alucard answered. "My mother's name was Lisa and she was mortal." 

"I would very much like to hear the story of how that happened," Sypha sounded a little bit shocked. Audrey couldn't help but reciprocrate her surprise. It was quite a shocking tale. 

Alucard surprisingly chuckled. "She actually showed up at his front door. She found the castle and banged the door with the pommel of her knife."

"She sounds interesting," Audrey said, with a soft smile. Her own memories of her mother were faint. All she remembered were remnants of a smile. 

"Oh, she was remarkable," Alucard answered, sounding a little proud. "She beat on the door until my father let her in, and then demanded he touch her how to be a doctor."

Trevor suddenly sat up. "Wait, Dracula taught a human woman how to be a Doctor? What was first?" He scoffed. "Blood-letting?"

"God, you still think you are funny," Alucard mumbled. "My father-"

"Dracula..." Trevor interrupted. 

Alucard had a steely look on his face. "Is a man of science, a philosopher, a scholar and knows things our society has forgotten three times over. Do you still not understand the enormity of what we're doing? He's gone mad. And from that, there is no recovering him."

"Shame," Trevor sarcastically remarked.

"It's a tragedy," Alucard continued. "He is a repository of centuries of learning. He could have changed the world. I think he might have, if mother hadn't died. She'd sent him out into the world. That's why he wasn't there when the bishops took her."

"She sent him away?" Audrey softly said. He looked at her, his amber eyes ever so slightly glowing.

"She sent him to travel, to learn the true state of the world, the true nature of humans and how they live."

"She was turning him," Sypha remarked, her expression a little tense. 

Alucard stared in the crackling flames of the fire. "Imagine if he could have aimed all that knowledge at improving lives. If the religious inquisition hadn't proved true all of his worst instincts about humans."

He ended his sentence in slight fury. Audrey could relate to him though. She knew exactly how it felt in some ways; having been driven out of her home village due to the effects of the stupid inquisition. They had set the world backwards in so many ways and it was now paying the price. 

"And now," Trevor said. "He's going to use her death as an excuse to destroy the world."

"Oh the world will still be here Belmont. Trees will still grow, birds will still sing, animals will still hump away in the undergrowth. But you won't be here. And you won't be here," Alucard looked at both Trevor and Sypha as he delivered his ominous statement. "Maybe the Phoenix-

"Audrey. I have a name. Use it." Audrey interrupted. Even if she was some all powerful, magical creature of balance, she was still human. Human in the same ways Alucard was. If more and more people referred to her as just the Phoenix...it would hurt, for sure.

"Audrey might still be here, but not the two of you. The sun will still set, but you will not see it rise. There will only be Dracula and his war council and the hordes of the night. He writes in great books, you know. He hews the cover himself from oak, and wraps them in the preserved skin of the people he hated most."

There was a slight chill in the air and it was not from the wind.

"And he writes plans," Alucard continued his ominous tale. "I've seen them. Ideas for darkening clouds and making them as permanent in the air as the frost of the north. Great strange flying machines that pull shrouds across the sky to block out the sun. Imagine. A world without humans, under endless invented night. And Dracula in his castle, his revenge so horribly complete that there is nothing left to do but look out over a world without art or memory or laughter and know that he did his work well. That he did it all for love." 

Almost like a signal to this oncoming darkness, there were growls in the distance.

Audrey knew it could only mean one thing. Time for the night creatures to arrive.

thank you to mellichors for that stunning opening gif!

life's been a lot crazy this year and if you haven't seen the announcment on my message board, i moved to australia for my masters in july. i am feeling a lot more settled than when i first landed and i finally felt like writing something. there will be more updates coming soon, hopefully. 

i wanted to start off by updating this fic because i miss alucard and i started rewatching castlevania. i am so in love with him. i've got some fun stuff planned for audrey and alucard and hopefully as i pick up pace in updating, you all get to see it too. 

till then, i hope you enjoyed this chapter! please let me know your thoughts in the comments below <3