Chapter 84: FALL OF DRACULA III
Even lesser-known entities joined: lumen sprites, tiny orbs of pure energy zipping like comets, detonating on impact with force rivaling nukes; terra guardians, golem-like beings of living stone, earthquakes following their charges; aether sirens, whose hypnotic songs warped perceptions, luring into traps.
Dracula, bereft of blood and essence, embodied primal ferocity—a primogenitor vampire reduced to physical supremacy, instincts, and unyielding intellect. He navigated the maelstrom with predatory finesse, evading Zeus’s bolts by vaulting into seraphim clusters, using their forms as momentary cover before dismantling them with claw rakes that severed wings and extinguished lights. Against the Primordial Dragon’s inferno, he charged undaunted, skin blistering yet enduring, closing distance to unleash a barrage of strikes targeting vulnerable under-scales, eliciting roars that shattered nearby titans.
Lucifer’s chains he intercepted mid-lash, coiling one around his arm to reel the sovereign closer, delivering a knee to the gut that expelled hellish vapors. Odin’s runes he shattered with focused impacts, his will clashing against fate’s weave, unraveling bindings through sheer defiance.
The conflict endured a full lunar cycle, segmented into phases of escalating intensity. The inaugural week saw numerical dominance from celestial and elemental forces; Dracula countered by toppling an ice behemoth into seraphim formations, creating avalanches of frost and feathers he exploited for ambushes—ripping through ranks, his movements a fluid dance of destruction despite the parasites’ toll.
Blood from the slain he diverted not to sustenance but to his concealed artifact, the infinite myriad blood pool, a sub-realm reservoir amassing essences for future contingencies. Yet, feeding proved elusive; adversaries assaulted ceaselessly, martyrs diving to interrupt, their sacrifices denying him recovery.
The second week amplified with Mephistopheles’s deceptions peaking—phantom legions materializing, blending real and illusory threats. Dracula’s honed senses pierced the facade: discerning subtle discrepancies in scents, heart rhythms absent in fakes. He demolished mirages with sweeping attacks, transitioning seamlessly to genuine foes, his roars dispersing illusory mists.
Odin’s fate chains intensified; Dracula broke them repeatedly, each liberation a testament to his anomalous nature, defying predestined defeat.
The third week shifted to void and arcane dominance, walkers phasing to ensnare, sorcerers unraveling. Dracula adapted ingeniously—grasping a walker during transition, using its momentum to propel into a sorcerer’s ritual circle, inducing catastrophic feedback explosions that claimed clusters of attackers.
Seraphel’s angelic choirs intoned searing hymns; Dracula silenced them with hurled debris—shattered golem fragments serving as projectiles, turning aerial assaults into plummeting graveyards.
The culminating week exacted the heaviest toll, fatigue compounding wounds: lacerations from chimeric venoms, scorches from fire lords, fractures from terra guardians’ quakes. Yet, he persisted, slaying multitudes—lumen sprites popped like stars, aether sirens’ songs turned against allies via disrupted echoes, shadow weavers unraveled by forced exposure to light bursts from fallen seraphim.
Atop the ever-growing mound of cadavers—entangled wings, shattered scales, dissolving voids, petrified stone—a defiant Dracula stood, his form a testament to endurance, lesions stark but bloodless.
"Indeed, this concludes it," Baal advanced, traversing the macabre heap with nonchalant strides, boots squelching in ichor. "A true monstrosity until the finale."
Dracula’s sinews petrified, desiccation consummating its grip. No vitae remained; he was a statue of defiance. His gaze swept the encircling victors—expressions mingling terror, admiration, reverence. Conquering him at zenith? An impossibility etched in their souls.
"My stratagem orchestrated your downfall," Baal gloated, thrusting his palm into Dracula’s thorax, digits encircling the pulsating core. No utterance of anguish escaped; satisfaction withheld.
"Final utterances?" Baal constricted.
A spectral grin emerged. "I shall return, exacting vengeance." Mentally, he dispatched the chalice into the void’s labyrinthine depths, retrieval a near-mythical feat.
"Why that act?" Baal queried.
"Your essence. Zeus’s. Mine. Odin’s, Mephistopheles’s, Lucifer’s—all lineages’ vitae—harbored in my kin’s masterpiece. The infinite myriad blood pool. Infused with my essence deliberately, it guarantees rebirth afar. Then, retribution unfolds."
"Folly in disclosure," Baal sneered. "I’ll locate and obliterate it." He extracted the organ with savage yank.
"Safeguard my heart and corpse diligently," Dracula exhaled faintly. "Proximity of pool, heart, form... heralds my revival." Vision dimmed, existence ebbed. Bloodsuckers desiccated, purpose fulfilled.
"Dispose of the husk as you deem," Baal addressed the assembly. "The heart’s custody is mine." He pivoted to depart, but Zeus interposed.
"Destination with that? His admonition resonates. No resurgence permitted."
.
"A sovereign extinguished," he continued, disdain curling his tone as he shifted his colossal form aside, his crimson eyes glinting like dying suns. "There shall be no return for him."
But the cosmos stirred. Space folded, and a presence more ancient than ruin itself rippled through the gathering. The Primordial Dragon coiled into view, scales shimmering like fractured galaxies, its breath burning with stellar embers. When it spoke, the stars seemed to dim.
"Concern warranted," it rumbled, its words vibrating the fabric of reality. "He was anomalous. Unpredictable. A risk intolerable. And you suggest devouring his remnants for power? That—" its maw opened wider, revealing an infinity of burning teeth, "—is unacceptable."
Baal’s irritation flared, a storm threatening to break. Black flames licked along his arms, and the ground—though it was no ground at all—fractured under his aura. Yet even he, in all his fury, knew when to stay his hand. To oppose the Primordial Dragon and the other sovereignswas to invite a war that could unmake creation itself.
So instead, he turned the confrontation to something else—a game, a challenge. His grin was a wound carved across the void.
"A contest, then, for amusement," he said, voice like grinding stone. "The sanctuary—a drifting refuge that roams the seams of existence. It is anchored briefly in this reality. Hide the heart within, beyond mortal and divine perception. When it drifts once more, we hunt. Whoever finds it claims the relic. Desire for this prize is not mine alone."
Lucifer leaned forward, the faintest curve of amusement tugging at his lips, his argent hair glinting in the void-light.
"Intriguing," he mused, his voice silk laced with malice. "And the corpse?"
Odin, who had remained silent until now, shifted his single, piercing eye toward the gathered lords. His presence was quiet yet absolute.
"Destroy it," he declared, the weight of prophecy in his tone. "If it cannot be undone, cast it into the deep—a place even arrogance dares not reach. For if it rises, all falls."
Thus the gods, demons, and ancients turned upon the remains of Dracula. Their combined power was not legend but apocalypse made manifest. Zeus summoned tempests of pure lightning, each strike splitting dimensions. Lucifer called down infernos that burned beyond color, flames that consumed concepts, not flesh. Odin unleashed runes older than time, weaving erasure into reality’s threads.
The Primordial Dragon roared, hurling torrents of plasma hotter than stars, its wings eclipsing constellations. Seraphim descended, wings of light purging shadow. Voids answered, swallowing entire planes into nothingness. Arcane monarchs dissolved matter, bending laws until they screamed.
The universe trembled. Yet the body of the vampire lord endured. It did not burn, did not fade, did not fracture. It remained—mocking, defiant, an unyielding monument to a will that refused oblivion.
Frustration mounted. Defeat tasted bitter. At last, with silent accord, they gathered the indestructible shell and hurled it into the deepest abyss, a rift within the void so profound that even memory avoided it. There, in the nadir of existence, it was sealed, buried beyond ambition’s reach.
But the heart—the last vestige of forbidden vitality—was different. It did not follow the corpse. Instead, it was entrusted to the Sanctuary, a relic-plane that drifted through universes like a ghost ship, accessible only in fleeting moments. There it would rest, waiting, until destiny’s call.
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Peace, if it could be called such, was bought with fire and blood. Dracula’s death had not ended with silence; it had unleashed the fury of creation itself. The unified legions—celestials, elementals, voidborn, and more—descended on his legacy like a storm without mercy.
The Ripper clan, his progeny and loyalists, faced extinction. They fought with feral glory, their cries tearing the skies, but they were outmatched. The armies of gods and kings broke them piece by piece.
Lucien, blade in hand, carved through enemies until the light itself turned crimson. Kaelith burned her own soul to summon powers forgotten by even the ancients. But they were drowned in the tide, their deaths swallowed by the chaos. The last echoes of their defiance were snuffed out amid a world-shattering purge.
And then—silence.
The cosmos exhaled, not with joy but with wary relief. For though the shadow had been slain, a question lingered like a phantom in the stars:
Could the primogenitor’s shadow ever truly fade?