Chapter 721: Not Blind This Time
"ELIZA! OI... ELIZABETH!"
Ivan’s voice tore through the burning pier.
Elizabeth convulsed in his arms, her fingers clawing into his coat so hard the fabric split beneath her nails. Blood leaked from her nose and mouth, dark against her pale lips, while her eyes stared into something none of them could see.
She groaned in agony while desperately trying to speak as the air became trapped in her throat, blocking most of her sentences.
’What’s happening?! She’s never had such a big seizure before...!’
"Save them!"
Ivan froze.
Elizabeth’s body trembled violently as she grabbed his collar with both hands and pulled herself closer, almost climbing up his chest despite the strength leaving her limbs.
"Please..." Her voice cracked. "Please, Ivan..."
"Eliza."
"Save them..." Her eyes finally found his face, but the madness inside them remained. "Hurry... please don’t take them from me..."
Ivan’s blood ran cold.
Dimitri stepped forward, his earlier anger like a mirage as he softly whispered as if speaking to a small child. He glanced at Ivan while helping hold her arms down, lest she hurt herself or one of them.
"Eliza, who?"
"The children..." Elizabeth sobbed, shaking her head as if trying to force the image out. "Our children... their children... everyone..."
Nagisa’s expression hardened.
It wasn’t like they didn’t know of Elizabeth’s clan, the Báthory, having the ability to look into the future, though a rare ability she had demonstrated such abilities in small ways before now, especially during combat.
Vladimir, still supported by Claudia and Selina, turned toward the distant outpost with his face drained of colour.
"Could it be...?"
Ivan held Elizabeth tighter.
"What did you see?"
Elizabeth tried to answer.
Only a broken sound came out.
She pressed one bloodstained hand over her mouth, breathing too fast, while her eyes flickered again and again as if the vision kept replaying behind them.
"Alucard..." she whispered. "He never.... wanted us.... from the start...."
Elizabeth swallowed, her voice barely holding together.
"He isn’t coming here."
When she spoke the last word, everyone’s eyes became more serious, and they glanced at each other with the most rotten expressions.
"Shit!" Ivan cursed as he quickly stood and ruffled his silver hair. "I was supposed to make things easier for him!"
Ivan glanced to the west, where his son was likely about to face a brush with death, and then he glanced towards the Volkov estate.
"Nagisa, Selina... Claudia, take my wife back to the Volkov compound"
He didn’t wait for their response before leaping off the pier.
"Dimitri, Vlad... come on!"
...
Meanwhile, inside the outpost command room, Nikolai suddenly stopped breathing.
One moment, he stood before the sea chart, listening to the officer’s updated report. The next, his chest seized as if a hand had reached inside him and crushed all three hearts at once.
He gripped the table so hard his fingers sank into the reinforced metal.
"N-Nikolai?!" Selene noticed first, gasping at his sudden change.
He tried to answer her, but it was like someone pushed a blade down his throat, and he slowly began sawing.
Obsidian blood dripped from his nose in great amounts.
It struck the map in thick drops, spreading across the marked route toward the floating island like ink.
"Babe?"
Nikita was sitting a distance away, but she rushed over the moment she sniffed the air.
The room became chaotically silent.
He struggled to stand as everything started to twirl and mix, before a strange vision started playing, but it was unclear... as if blocked by a layer of static.
For a single instant, he saw Selene’s pale hand lying motionless on flooded stone.
His breath stopped.
then beside her... Nikita lay lifeless, her body torn apart...
’No...’
His mind went blank, his pupils shrank, and everything suddenly became confusing.
"NIKOLAI!"
"Honey, wake up!"
Loud shouts echoed as he suffocated for several seconds, desperately trying to swallow air to fuel his brain, and yet, the pain lingered even as the room stopped spinning and the faces of his two wives appeared.
"Selene... Nikita?!"
He hurriedly hugged their bodies, lifting the pair off the floor, overjoyed that they were alive, he couldn’t help but shout.
Yet his body remembered it.
The pain in his chest sharpened until his knees almost buckled. His three hearts hammered out of rhythm, each one beating against the memory of Alucard’s hand tearing it free. Black veins crawled up his neck. Something beneath his skin twisted, pressing against bone from the inside.
"Nikolai!" Selene gripped his face with both hands. "Look at me."
His eyes struggled to focus.
For a moment, her throat was crushed.
Then she was alive again.
Warm.
Breathing.
Angry and terrified.
Nikita clung to his shoulder, her ears flattened as she pressed her forehead against his jaw. "Hey, hey, don’t you dare look at us like that. We’re here."
Nikolai’s fingers tightened around them, almost crushing them as he panted.
"I saw you both die..."
"What?" Nikita whispered.
"I don’t know how." His voice rasped, deeper than it should have been. "But I felt it. Your bodies... your blood... There was a sudden attack and the eastern wall blew up... then Alucard came and..."
Selene’s eyes sharpened; she didn’t panic or comfort him as Nikita did, but instead took a deep breath.
"Nikolai... you carry Báthory blood."
His grip around them loosened slightly.
"What?"
"Through your mother’s line." Selene kept both hands against his face, forcing him to look at her and not the images still clawing at the back of his mind. "Your clan was renowned for its foresight and divination in the past, making it one of the four royal clans. It wasn’t its combat ability but this unique trait..."
"Future...?"
Selene nodded once, her expression grim. "My father once told me he witnessed Mother-in-Law... your Mother suffer something similar. A seizure as she saw something strange, an event that had yet to happen to them... During that time, blood leaked from her nose and mouth. Her eyes unfocused as if she was trapped somewhere else."
Nikolai’s breathing remained uneven.
He looked at Selene.
Then at Nikita.
’If that’s the case... then this is important!’
Thanks to Selene’s verbal slap and insight, he recovered instantly.
"We need to prepare... I will relay what happened. Can you spread the information?" He looked at both women and the officers who watched with uncertain eyes.
The first officer reacted fastest.
"Yes, my lord!"
His voice cracked slightly, but his hands moved well enough, fingers striking the command console and opening several internal channels at once. The wall monitor flickered as different sections of the outpost appeared: the eastern wall, the courtyard, the armoury, the medical relay, the barracks.
Nikolai released Selene and Nikita slowly.
He still looked at them once more before turning away.
"For now, the eastern wall exploded from the centre, causing dozens of men to die instantly, before they rushed through with clones of Rika, and our parents."
"The Eastern wall must be reinforced, but there is likely already something wrong with the construction or defence... I will leave that to you," he said. "Reinforce it immediately, but don’t gather everyone there like cattle. Layer the defences, so that if it explodes, the second and third lines must already be ready."
The officer swallowed hard. "Understood!"
Nikolai finally released a slow breath and dragged one hand through his damp hair, wiping the remaining blood from beneath his nose with the back of his wrist.
"Good. Then move."
The command room snapped into motion.
Officers rushed between consoles, messengers left through the vertical doors, and the monitors shifted from passive observation to active deployment.
Within minutes, the base, about to enter a period of calm, became filled with movement, voices and shouts.
Nikolai watched in silence for several seconds.
The images from that future still lingered in the back of his mind, but keeping active helped to keep them from stirring his emotions.
Selene stood beside him, posture straight, crimson eyes scanning every route with cold focus. "Place the reserve squads behind the second gate. Not directly behind the first. If the first line breaks, they need space to retreat without trampling each other."
The officer repeated her order instantly.
Nikita leaned over the table and pointed near the inner road. "Put Fenrir units here and here. If anything fast gets through, they can intercept before it reaches the command building."
"Understood, Lady Nikita!"
Nikolai glanced at her.
She caught his look and clicked her tongue.
"What? Have you forgotten I was doing this for years before we became lovers?"
"I didn’t say anything."
"Heh, you liar..."
"I was just going to say you look sexy when you’re so serious..." He said with a smile.
"Ah..."
Nikita’s face flushed as she quickly turned away. "H-Hmph....!" though her fluttering ears and tail gave away how happy she was at his words.
As for Selene, she took a secondary role, focusing instead on calming Nikolai and helping him recover from his seizure.
This was enough for Nikolai.
’No wonder I married these women...’
Whenever it came down to it, they would always have his back and help him endure the darkest times in his life. He glanced at the clock, trying to piece together the blurry image of the clock, wondering just how long he had until the attack began.
’Come on then, Alucard! This time I am not blind and stupid... I won’t let things happen as they did before...’
He refused to see his loved ones die ever again, and if that meant he would fall into that berserk, monstrous state to achieve his goals.
’Then I will gladly fall into the depths of hell.’
