Encore

Magic

Alucard sulks underground for a period of time that's long enough to be annoying but not long enough Trevor isn't also annoyed by the implication that Trevor's an infant who forgets things exist if they get out of sight. He is going to find out what the asshole has against dogs.

But he's going to wait until Alucard doesn't have a pit to hide in to say so because despite what Alucard evidently thinks, Trevor is perfectly smart and capable of long-term strategy.

"I have no idea how this happened," Alucard admits when he pokes his head out again. "I expected the blast's force to have knocked things loose but it's completely severed. At least what's left seems as solid as before -"

"So also crap," Trevor interrupts. "Now will you stop standing on the edge, Sypha?"

"It's just as hollow under where you're standing."

"Who cares?"

Then Alucard looks at Sypha and makes a thoughtful sound.

"Don't you dare," Trevor says immediately.

"Don't I dare what?" the smug bastard says.

"Do what you were going to do and not whatever new bad idea you had!"

"Sypha," Alucard says, "instead of showing you, would you like to try casting the spell?"

Sypha looks like she's considering, but that's only because Sypha is really good at pretending like she's still considering something she's definitely going to do.

And indeed, "Don't tell Sypha to do your blood magic!" is fucking immediately undermined by Sypha asking, "Would a donkey be enough?"

Alucard sighs. Still floating in the pit, he rests his arms on the stone and either the holy got burned off the edges by the explosion or salamander skin insulates from the magic kind of fire too. "It would be completely unnecessary. I told you, humans are better at magic that alters the world around them. You should be able to cast the spell without issue."

"And if you're wrong and your blood magic spell eats too much of her blood and turns her into a shriveled corpse - " and fuck there is no if is there this is absolutely the sort of thing Hell would think was funny for her to be dead like that blood loss and bloodless aren't you fucking funny God -

Well fuck you, Alucard's stupidly deep and definitely fatal hole in the ground is still right there and Trevor's reasonably certain he can't get double-damned for jumping.

Maybe he should right now. Then he doesn't have to even see her die.

"Belmont!" Alucard shouts at him, sounding irritated. He stops by the edge. Right, Alucard's not going to want Trevor dead until Sypha's dead and he knows better about his stupid prophecy, but if Trevor stabs him he should let go... Or if Trevor cuts his hand right off when Alucard grabs him, since Trevor's still got the sword. Yeah, that's a better plan. More decisive. "Did you hear what I said?"

"No," Trevor says.

"I said," Alucard tells him, "there's no such thing as blood magic spells. Stop calling it that."

Wow, God. Called your fucking bluff, huh? It's no fun if Trevor figures it out in advance so now there's no such thing as blood magic at all?

"But that's how you were planning to fix this," Sypha objects, so the whole conversation still happened. Arg, this would be giving him a headache if he didn't already have one.

"It's not a type of spell." Alucard takes his hands off the stones to gesture and Trevor jolts, expecting him to fall now that he's let go but, vampire, floating, not an issue. "It's...when you throw charcoal onto a fire, does the fire care what kind of wood it started out as? It's fuel. And if, supposedly, you are to manage to teleport a castle - a castle that, as Belmont complained so vehemently, is far larger than an ordinary castle - pulling a few stones back into place should be no problem."