"You have an interesting smell..."
The phrase hung suspended in the stale air of the place, and the temperature of the hall seemed to plummet instantly.
However, Lief faced Dracula's penetrating gaze without the slightest trace of nervousness; on the contrary, he arched his eyebrows with genuine curiosity and brought his hand to his nose, sniffing the fabric of the shirt Velkan lent him, showing an expression of doubt.
"Interesting? I bathed just before leaving and used a soap with mint essence... Do you not like personal hygiene?"
"..."
Dracula's face became even gloomier, if that was possible.
Having lived hundreds of years, he had seen countless warriors come to challenge him with war cries, and had also seen kings and cowards kneel begging for mercy, but meeting a human who ignored his presence so completely, and even dared to joke to his face, was an absolute and unpleasant novelty.
"You are not human."
He said taking a step forward, narrowing his eyes as if he wanted to dissect Lief's soul.
"In your body there is something that I find contradictory... It is an essence that is familiar to me, but at the same time it is so disgusting that it turns my stomach."
"..."
"Did you really notice?"
The curve of the smile at the corner of Lief's mouth widened, losing its warmth to become something more distant.
"It seems my disguise is not yet perfect if a nose like yours can smell me. Well... since I was discovered so easily, I suppose it is bad manners to keep pretending."
Raising his hand, he snapped his fingers.
Snap
With that, an intense golden halo suddenly lit up above Lief's head, spinning slowly like a crown.
It shone with the intensity of a miniature sun, dispersing the castle's shadows with a sacred and incandescent majesty that tolerated no profanation, illuminating every dark corner of the hall with a scorching warmth.
!
Dracula's pupils contracted violently, blinded momentarily.
That presence... THAT ENERGY WAS WHAT HE DETESTED MOST!
But before he could even react to the natural enemy he had in front of him, a scene occurred that shocked him even more.
FWOOOOSH
Accompanied by the sound of a powerful gust of wind that seemed to tear the fabric of space, the clothes on Lief's back seemed to dissolve and a pair of immense wings unfurled in all their splendor.
And they were not ordinary wings.
They were wings of immaculate plumage. Each feather seemed to be woven with threads of light, emitting an aura of holiness so potent that the dust and dirt in the air were automatically repelled.
The breeze that rose upon flapping them swept away the stench of blood and chemicals, purifying the evil of the environment in the blink of an eye.
And Lief was no longer touching the ground.
Suspended half a meter up, with the halo spinning behind his head and the white wings extended spanning several meters in wingspan, his figure combined with his serene face transcended humanity.
It was a sublime and terrifying vision at the same time.
"An angel? Haha... Hahahaha!"
Dracula's laughter burst out suddenly with total madness. He threw his head back looking at the ceiling with a mixture of desolation and sarcasm.
"What a great God! What a merciful Father!"
His laughter cut off as abruptly as it had begun and his eyes locked onto Lief and the air in the room became charged with a rage fermented for over four hundred years.
It was a hatred capable of incinerating the world.
"I... I was his most loyal knight!"
"For his glory I bathed in the blood of the Turks! I planted his cross over every inch of land infested with pagans! I killed, tortured, and impaled in His name!"
He took a step forward, trembling with fury.
"And what did I get in return? Tell me!"
"The only thing I received was the false rumor of my death on the battlefield! It was the cold and damp corpse of my only beloved, who threw herself into the river to end her life believing that I had fallen!"
The memories assaulted his mind, overwhelming his control.
His face contorted into a mask of pain.
"When I returned home, dragging a body full of scars and fatigue, I found only despair! And that servant of God for whom I fought, that damned bastard priest... do you know what he told me?"
"'The soul of one who commits suicide cannot ascend to heaven. She will fall to hell and be raped by the eternal fire... for all eternity!'"
"Hahahaha! BURNED FOREVER!" He laughed again with madness, but tears began to well up from his eyes. "I waged his holy war, but He didn't even have the decency to protect my wife's soul!... A God like that... why should I worship him...?"
"So I rebelled! I spat on his name! I used the sword He blessed to split his church's cross in two! I drank the 'holy blood' that flowed from the chalice and swore to use this eternal and cursed life to combat his hypocrisy and his atrocities!"
His chest rose and fell violently, gasping like a wounded animal, and he pointed at Lief with an accusing finger.
"And then, He sent his favorite 'Left Hand'! He sent that hypocrite Gabriel to kill me with his own hands!"
"Now four centuries have passed...!" His gaze did not leave Lief, drilling into him. "And you, filthy angels, appear once more in front of me! Do you come to judge me again? Do you want to throw me into hell again? It is too much! This is an insult I am not going to tolerate!"
"...."
Meanwhile Lief observed the vampire's mental collapse, with a thought on a very different frequency.
'What a fuss over a simple disguise... With so much dramatic monologue, could it be that he is charging energy for a sudden burst of power?'
And his suspicion hit the nail on the head, but reality surpassed any expectation.
Dracula's anger had not only reached its peak, it had broken the dam of his sanity.
"If you desire to condemn me so much, then I will drag you to hell with me and STARTING WITH YOU!"
"GRAAAAAAAGH!!"
With an inhuman roar that burst from his throat, his fine clothes were torn to shreds violently while, under his skin a monstrous and unnatural musculature began to expand with a sickening speed.
His body grew, stretched, breaking the human form.
His spine arched and lengthened, forcing his posture toward something bestial.
His face melted and reformed, the jaw dislocated and jutted forward, opening into a snout bristling with razor sharp fangs. His ears stretched into points and his eyes lost the iris and the pupil, becoming two completely white orbs.
But the horror did not end there.
With a tearing sound, the skin of his back burst open. A pair of immense fleshy wings, similar to those of a bat sprouted violently.
In a matter of seconds, the refined man had disappeared.
In front of Lief rose an imposing monstrosity of more than three meters in height, an ungodly fusion of demon and a bat.
"..."
"You look pretty cool if I'm honest..." Touching his chin, Lief murmured with interest.
But his carefree tone was the final spark on a powder keg.
"DIE, WORM!!!"
The beast that had been Dracula became a black lightning bolt. His start being so brutal that it broke the sound barrier, shattering the few remaining windowpanes.
He lunged madly at Lief, with his claws seeking to decapitate him in a single movement.
"..."
Faced with this, Lief's interest intensified. He knew he could not take that blow directly.
Swish
With his wings flapping, he turned into a trail of white light, ascending vertically and dodging the claws.
And Dracula, blinded by anger and with too much momentum, could not stop.
Boom!
He crashed full force against the hall wall and it gave way to his brute force as if it were wet paper.
The wall exploded and he passed through the breach, shooting out of the castle, and was left momentarily suspended in the night sky.
Lief did not take long to follow him, floating through the huge hole.
The dust began to settle under the pale light of the full moon.
Outside, the air was very cold.
Both adversaries remained floating in the void, separated by about ten meters.
One was a luminous and sacred incarnation, the other, a nightmare of darkness and muscle.
Two antagonistic figures, the white and the black.
________
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