Vampire Hunter D Fan Fiction ❯ Vampire Hunter Ramika ❯ Excavation ( Chapter 1 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

Disclaimer: The recognizable characters appearing in this story are © Hideyuki Kikuchi and Toyoo Ashida, all rights reserved. They are used without permission and for entertainment purposes only. The author for writing this story is making no profit. Neither infringement upon nor challenge to the rights of the copyright holders is intended; nor should any be inferred.

Vampire Hunter Ramika

By: Ssinurn Solen

Chapter One: Excavation

Boom, tap, scrtich-scratch. Boom, ping, bang, scritch-scratch.
The miners worked diligently at the site the archeologist had found.
"Slower, you fools!" Professor Almund shouted, "I do not want you to damage any of the artifacts we may find."
"They are going as slow as they can," his assistant, Oscar Palfrey, said quietly, "they have to shore up the tunnel, or we will have a cave in. Your shouting, Nigel, will only make matters worse. Don't worry, these men know their job."
"They had best know what they are doing for the amount I am paying them."
"There will be plenty of treasure to make up for the expense tenfold."
"There you go again, Oscar, acting like this is one of your little raids. I am a scientist, not just a tomb raider like you are."
Oscar gave a chuckle. "The only difference between you and me is that you have a degree. We are of the same cloth professor, whether you like to admit it or not."
"I plan to put the treasures on display for the benefit of mankind, you just want to make a buck."
"So why this site? I thought you were only interested in ancient burial grounds. From what I see of what you have already unearthed, this looks more like the ruins of a temple of some sort."
"I believe it was a castle. The land above was so scorched that nothing would grow there. The villagers near here said this was a place of great evil and will not come near here. That is why I had to search near and far to find a group of miners who were willing to help with the excavation."
"Quite an expense for a ruin that is damaged so badly. What do you think destroyed it?"
"From the bits of metal and melted machinery I have found, something that produced a great amount of heat. I suspect an ancient explosive device of some type. No one can tell. The villagers I questioned before I started the excavation said that the site had been like this for at least two hundred years, maybe more. Yet, this castle has older sections, made of stone that were not melted. Look here."
Nigel Almund went to a sidewall of the tunnel and rubbed his hand against a smooth hewn piece of red marble.
Oscar brought a light and examined the smooth surface. It was pitted and cracked against some of the veins, but still intact enough to know it was placed there and not part of an ancient quarry.
"I take it you want to find the device that caused this destruction."
"Exactly. Just think if we could discover the manner in which the ancients destroyed themselves. The oldest books say something about a giant mushroom, and intense heat. I surmise this may have been the epicenter for one of those ancient bombs."
"Professor! We have found something!" A miner came running up quickly.
"What have you found?"
"A piece of clothing! My men are carefully digging it out from under the rocks."
"Clothing? Impossible! No piece of clothing could survive the intense heat that destroyed this place!"
Nigel and Oscar ran quickly after the miner through the winding tunnels.
The further down they went the cooler the air became.
The sound of the miners at their work became louder.
Oscar groaned. His ears were sensitive. The noise was giving him a headache.
They rounded a corner and saw a small group of miners wearing gloves.
The miners were digging out the piece of cloth with their hands so not to tear it any further.
Within a matter of minutes, the dark blue cloth was pulled free.
It was a cape, or rather, a piece of a cape. Along the hem were runes and strange symbols.
Nigel took one end of the cape and studied the runes under the lamp of his hard hat.
Oscar looked at another set of small symbols that were woven into the cloth near what was once part of the neckline.
Oscar gasped and dropped the cape. "Nigel, we have to get out of here, all of us."
"What are you talking about, Oscar? Give up the most important archeological discovery of my career?"
"Nigel! This is a vampire cape! This is a destroyed vampire fortress! Who know if any of them survived the destruction?"
"The reign of the vampires has been over for a hundred years or more. The hunters have killed most all of them off. Finding one of their castles partially intact is still a major discovery. The likelihood of finding a live vampire is slim to none."
"You are a fool, Nigel!" Oscar turned tail and ran out of the tunnels.

**********

Ramika Lee groaned as she tried to move. No part of her body would budge.
She hated being awakened from her dreams by all of the booming and other noises filtering through the rocks and rubble that surrounded her.
By all accounts she should be dead.
The only thing that saved her from the spell that destroyed her father, the vampire Lord, Magnus Lee, was the contents of the rubble that covered her when the audience chamber was destroyed.
Most of the rubble was made of a rare form of stone that was near impervious to heat.
Ramika wondered if the gods were playing a cruel joke on her.
She, a mere dhamphile, had survived while all the other creatures in attendance to her father's wedding to that human, Doris Lang, had perished.
She wondered to herself on how long she had been asleep in the prison of rubble. Was it a year, a hundred years or a thousand years? It did not matter.
She just wanted the horrible noises to stop so she could go back to her endless sleep.
She felt she could endure the torture if the noise stopped for short periods.
"They must be working in shifts." She thought to herself. "No being could endure working very long with out some sort of rest."
The banging and booming seemed to be endless.
Ramika wished she could move or open her eyes or mouth. The rubble around her was too compacted to do so.
Suddenly, she felt a pull off to her side.
Pain racked through her body.
She partially rolled over as something from underneath her was pulled away.
The action unsettled some of the dirt around her, allowing her to open her eyes and shift around slightly.
She wished she had not opened her eyes. Dirt streamed into them, making them sting.
The pain in her joints and along her skin slowly ebbed to be replaced with another more urgent pain.
Hunger.
Although she smelled the rich earth around her, another smell came to her nose through small perforations in the rubble. It was a smell she had not scented in many years.
Humans.
Her eyes watered, cleaning the dirt from them.
Her stomach lurched.
"I may have the blood of the vampire, but I am still too weak to push away the rest of this rubble." She mused.
She realized that the humans must have been digging near her.
"If they are looting, they must be completely insane or monumentally stupid." She thought to herself.
She thought that if she survived, certainly some of the Barberoy servants that her father employed might have survived as well. They were more ruthless than she was at that time.
She was not in the mood or inclination to kill.
"I wonder what happened to D." She thought, "I have had enough time buried here to consider his point. He was correct."
Ramika, during her long rest, had determined to never kill another human again. As for drinking a bit from a willing subject that was different. She would leave it up to the human to decide.

**********

The digging continued for several days in the area where the miners had found the piece of cape.
Professor Almund insisted that the miners use gloves, brushes and their hands to dig in the area.
He did not want to take any chance of any of his treasure being destroyed by explosives or pickaxes or hammers.
Although the miners were used to digging in this manner, they did not want to.
The warning from Oscar still rang through their ears.
None of the miners wanted to find a live vampire. Some of them had family who had been killed by vampires.
Despite Nigel's insistence that all of the vampire lords were dead and gone, many of the miners knew better.
Vampire hunters still made a good living tracking down those vampires who no longer held sway within their castles.
"You are going too slow! I wanted you to dig with your hands, but not to slow down to a crawl with your digging."
"Sorry sir." One of the miners grumbled as he continued to dig.
"Sir!" A miner came yelling from down the tunnel. "We have got trouble!"
"Damn Oscar." Nigel muttered before shouting to the messenger. "What is it?"
"A group of people from the village. Oscar went to their mayor and complained."
"Damn Oscar." He said louder this time.
"That is not the worst of it, Sir. They have two men with them. They want to talk to you about why the excavation should not continue."
"They can go to hell with their explanations, but I will talk to them. You men keep working. I will only be gone for a short while."

**********

Two very finely dressed gentlemen waited patiently in Professor Almund's tent for him to arrive.
"Do you think he will listen?"
"Not likely. The information we have about Magnus Lee comes second hand, my brother. We were not even born yet."
"Yes, but father and mother were both very specific about why we should learn about it."
A young serving girl came in with tea for the two gentlemen. She set the tray on a box Nigel used as a makeshift table.
"Please sit down sirs. I know the folding chairs are not comfortable, but you did come a long way in a short amount of time. I am certain the professor will want to hear what you say."
"Thank you."
"If there is anything you need, just yell. My name is Carmen."
The girl exited the tent and was nearly run over by Professor Almund.
"Get out of my way, Carmen, and who told you to serve these two tea?"
"No one, professor. It just seemed polite."
The professor grumbled something under his breath then patted Carmen on the shoulder to show he was not angry with her.
"Well gentlemen." Nigel said as he plopped down on his cot. "What do you have to tell me about my find."
"First, let us introduce ourselves. I am Sabattian Lang and this is my brother, Spenser. We came all the way from Fenren the moment we heard you were excavating this site. You see we have a very personal stake in your excavation of this castle."
"Personal eh? You two look too young to have a personal stake in my discovery, unless you are also archeologists."
"No, we happen to be vampire hunters."
"So you too have this cockamamie notion that the castle was the keep of some vampire lord. Well I don't believe it."
"You had best, professor, because it is true." Spenser stood and spoke up. "We know the story of this place very well. Our father insisted that we know it."
Nigel leaned back on his cot and adjusted the pillow. He tried to look bored, but the wild stares of the two thin, blonde haired hunters put him on edge.
Nigel hated fighters. To him, there was always a wiser solution than firing off guns or wilding swords like the two brothers carried on their hips.
"So, then your father was an archeologist then?"
"No, he was a vampire hunter. Our mother was a werewolf hunter."
The professor sat up and laughed until he cried tears. "That is rich! Vampires are extinct and there are no such things as werewolves! Oh, the Barberoy have mutant creatures they claim to be werewolves, but they are only just mutants with lots of fur."
"True, there are no more werewolves." Sabattian politely sipped his tea. "They were all killed off, mainly by their vampire guardians. The vampire lords found them inefficient and untrustworthy."
Nigel took a deep breath. "You are serious, aren't you?"
"Quite." Spenser replied as he finished off his tea.
"So, what do you know about my excavation site?"
"It was a castle that belonged to the vampire lord, Magnus Lee. He and his dhamphile daughter were the last of his line."
Nigel scooted his cot over to where he could grab a cup of tea for himself. He wanted something stronger, but did not want to cloud his mind. As a professor, he knew he had to keep his mind open.
"Do you know what destroyed the castle? Was it one of those mushroom bombs the old texts speak of?"
"No professor." Sabattian said as he wiped his mouth with a linen napkin from the tea tray. "Our father destroyed the castle using ancient magic."
"That is impossible. I am nearing my sixtieth year and neither me nor any of my colleges heard of this site. Not even the villagers nearby knew anything about it, save that nothing grew here and that it was evil. It has sat this way for hundreds of years."
"That it has, professor. You see, whether you want to believe it or not, my brother and I are nearly seven hundred years old. We inherited more of the blood of our father than our mother. Of the six children our mother bore, we were the only two to not have a human lifespan."
Nigel dropped his cup and stared at the two. "Impossible. They must be joking. But how can they be? The far outdated style of dress and hairstyle. No man wears shoulder length hair anymore. They rode horses instead of hover cycles or a hover car. No, shut up mind, you are tricking me again."
"Sabattian and me are dhamphiles, as our father is. He is Vladistan Tepes Dracula V, more commonly known as Vampire Hunter D."
Nigel had heard stories of the legendary vampire hunter. Most of the time, D was thought of as a fairy tale hero. One whose stories were told to children to get them to go to sleep.
Spenser gave Nigel a knowing look. "So you have heard of our father."
"Yes."
"Contrary to popular belief, he is not dead. He has just lain down for a long sleep while we take over for a while. You could say we take shifts." Sabattian chuckled.
"So, why should the castle not be excavated? Magnus Lee is dead, isn't he?"
"Oh yes, father 's quite certain that Magnus met his end. He is just not sure about other creatures that might still be alive under the rubble."
Nigel's eyes perked up. This was an opportunity not to miss, especially if there were still monsters in the ruins. "Then it is my great fortune that you are here! You see, if there are things alive in there, you two can exterminate them for me. I will pay you, of course."
Sabattian and Spenser looked at each other then back at the professor.
"You are serious."
"Of course, Spenser, or is it Sabattian? Twins always confuse me."
"We are not twins. Spenser is eight years younger than me."
"Whatever. So are you up to the task? Oh, and I will pay you extra if you shoo off the townspeople blocking the entrance to the site."
"We charge two million per job? Can you afford that?"
"I am a very rich man. I have to be to afford graduate school. Two million is pocket change. Do we have a deal?"
"We do. "

**********

Ramika sighed inwardly as she felt the rubble around her slowly loosen.
The ones who were digging around were somewhere below her, so the smaller bits of dirt and sand were sifting their way down from between the larger blocks.
She knew they would not find her. From the sound, they were digging down, not up.
Fortunately, there was a decent size crack in the block above her. If enough of the rubble sifted down without the block she was lying on toppled, she could work her way up a bit.
It no longer mattered to her whether it was day or night. Since her discovery that she was a dhamphile and not a full vampire, she longed to see what daylight really looked like.
Still, in a matter of hours she would be able to move a bit more.
If she had the strength, she would escape, unnoticed.
As the time wore on, she noticed the small crack in the stones above her widen.
"That is my way out." She mused to herself.
She slowly moved, being careful not to disturb the stones below her too much.
It would do no good if Ramika were to topple down atop the workers below.

**********

Spenser played tricks for the miners as they dug through the rubble. They especially likes the way he could walk up the walls and dance a jig on the ceiling.
Neither Sabattian nor Nigel was amused at Spenser's lighthearted foolishness.
"Brother, this is not the time for you to amuse yourself. We have a job to protect the professor and his miners."
"I know, but they can not work with heavy hearts. I just wanted to lighten the mood."
"The mood will be worse if your tomfoolery awakens a monster and kills a dozen of those we are supposed to protect."
"What is the matter, Sabattian? Do your extraordinary senses feel something?"
"As a matter of fact they do. Several things in fact. There are monsters lying dormant in these ruins. How many? I cannot say. But, it is good that the professor has us here."
"The monsters would have awakened on their own eventually. The entire surrounding area would pay for the destruction that happened hundreds of years ago."
"You mean there are monsters still here! Oh, if you could, I would like to capture and imprison one alive!"
"Professor Almund, there is little chance of that. You will have to settle for a corpse. Besides from all of the jewelry and gold clumps we have found, it looks like your investment has paid off."
"You are awfully uptight, Sabattian. Are these monsters close?"
Sabattian shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He fingered the hilt of his sword as he looked around the dimly lit tunnel.
"What do you see, brother?"
"I see at least two creatures have awakened. The stronger of the two is moving away from us, the other is digging towards your miners in one of the other tunnels. I am off."
Sabattian drew his sword and went running down the tunnel.
"Can your brother see through solid rock?"
"No professor." Spenser did a flip from his perch on a ledge near the ceiling of the cave and landed on his feet. "It is more like an electrical current. The easiest way to describe it is like a bat uses sound. The sound bounces off an object. Yet, that isn't quite it either. He just feels his prey. I don't really understand it myself."
"You don't have the same ability?"
"No, but Sabattian cannot crack a joke or walk on walls either. We each have different talents. I only wish he elaborated on the one that was moving away from us."
"You are afraid of an ambush?
"Frankly, yes professor."

*********

Ramika made her way through the crack in the stones.
She found herself in a small stone room.
She did not need light to know exactly where she was or that the room falling on her saved her life.
Ramika knew the uncomfortable feeling that always came over her when her father had left his trophy room open.
All around her were weapons and magic treasures that her father had taken off the dead bodies of vampire hunters over the years of his reign.
One final, painful push, and she was in the center of the room.
Somehow, the uneasiness was comforting.
Ramika knew she was safe in that room, despite the holy magic that made her shaky. No monster would dare try to disturb her in that room.
She carefully stood and brushed herself off.
She was cut and bruised all over her body, but it did not matter. She knew she would heal in time, faster if she had a bit of blood from a willing participant.
Most of her clothing was in tatters.
Ramika knew if she mulled around a little bit in the rubble, she might find something she could wear.
Her father had always liked to keep the clothing of the hunters if it was not too torn up or bloody. He often used the clothing on a zombie as a deterrent to other hunters.
Magnus Lee knew the value of scare tactics was often better than brute force.
Ramika easily found shirts and pants. They were a little big, but she also found several belts and a piece of armor that strapped across her midriff.
Her boots had built in sheaths already loaded with fine daggers. Ramika had to wrap her feet in order for the boots to fit, but she knew a good cobbler could fix them once she was out of the ruins.
She completed her ensemble with a fine, brown hooded cape.
Ramika found several daggers in sheaths. She strapped them where she could.
Finally, she looked around at the rest of the cache.
She placed magic rings on her fingers.
One ring in particular made her feel refreshed. As she stared at the red gem, her wounds quit hurting.
"Hmm, a bloodstone. Very rare. Father must have not realized he had it among the rest of this junk. Or, he was too full of himself to use it."
Bloodstones were said to store energy that could be used instead of blood when the vampire was in need.
Ramika knew that D was not the only dhamphile to attack her father over the years, although he was the first she had met. The bloodstone must have belonged to one of them.
Ramika's eyes were drawn to a sword half covered by other junk weapons in the room.
She cleared away the garbage and picked up the sword in its scabbard.
The scabbard looked as if no time or dust had settled upon it.
She pulled the short sword. It was very light.
Although Ramika preferred daggers to swords, she liked that sword.
The blade looked new, although she knew by the design that it was ancient. It was possibly older than her father was.
The pommel had a hand guard above the basket shaped hilt. The hilt was in the shape of a gold dragon.
The dragon had rubies for eyes and emeralds for claws.
Although it was hard to make out, she read the inscription, Vindicare, Artifex Toledo, 1485.
"Ah, truly an ancient sword. I am certain I can put it to use."
Ramika strapped the sword to her side.
She looked around the room and found an opening where the door to the trophy room once was.
Amazingly, the door was mostly clear of debris.
Another one of the rings she wore seemed to be some sort of compass ring.
Ramika used this ring to point her in the best direction to easily find the surface.
She took a deep breath. "Soon I will be free."

**********

Author's Notes:

Dhamphile or Dhamphere are both proper spellings of the word for half-vampires. Both spellings are pronounced, Dum- peel.
Vindicare, Artifex Toledo, 1485- Latin, Vindicator, crafted in Toledo Spain in 1485. This indicates that the sword was used in the witch hunt authorized by Pope Innocent VIII in 1484.

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