Fanfic / Queen of Blood (SirWill)

Cover pic by SirWill

Taylor Hebert from Worm dies in the locker and wakes up three months later, in her own grave. Powerful. With faint memories of a life not her own. And why does she dream of a castle in the mountains? A crossover between Worm and a composite version of the various Castlevania games.

The author's comments on the story can be found here.

May be found on both the Spacebattles CrW Forum, and on Fanfiction.net.

The fanfic was completed in February 2018 and it has a sequel in the form of Bloody Stars.

Beware, Worm Spoilers below!

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This fanfic contains examples of the following:

A - D

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Mourneblade, Alucard's new sword. A result of Castlevanian alloys and magic, Alucard's blacksmithing, Armsmaster's Tinker skills, nanothorn tech, and Endbringer flesh, the final product is so sharp when active it would sink to the hilt in the floor if dropped.
• Achilles' Heel: Just like Clairvoyant, Scion's senses give him full awareness of everything around his planet-sized body... but that sense does not quite extend outside the atmosphere, meaning that anything appearing there (such as on that dimension's moon) might not be noticed quickly enough.
• Adaptational Badass: Emily Piggot becomes Irfit, the god of fire following the death of Behemoth.
• Adaptational Deviation: invoked The fanfic itself was written both prior to the release (and finishing) of Ward, and was also written during the earlier years of the growth of the Parahumans fandom online, resulting in multiple bits of popular Fanon effectively sneaking their way in.
• Adaptational Heroism: Madison Clements. While Madison did eventually perform a Heel–Face Turn in canon following a My God, What Have I Done? realization over how much of a Jerkass she was, she performs one significantly faster here thanks to Taylor's death traumatizing her and making her better realize the error of her ways. She even triggers and becomes the new heroic cape "Paladin", and dedicates herself to helping protect people from monsters & other threats.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Downplayed with Amy Dallon. While she starts out the fanfic as the moody Jerkass she is in canon, she goes through a significantly better and healthier character arc here that leads to her becoming a happier and far better mentally-adjusted person.
• Adaptational Origin Connection: Here, the Endbringers are in fact the various gods of the Castlevania-Earth who have been twisted and malformed by the Entities into superweapons for inciting conflict & ensuring the propagation of the Cycle.
• Adaptational Personality Change: Thanks to having been transformed into a vampire, Taylor is far more openly emotional, direct, flirtatious, and prone to mood swings & fits of rage than her canonical counterpart, who was generally more of The Stoic thanks to having been traumatized by the bullying campaign the Trio conducted upon her.
• Adaptational Villainy: Sophia Hess/Shadow Stalker is significantly worse and more despicable than her base canon counterpart, complete with having her personality more heavily based around a delusional Social Darwinist-esque Might Makes Right philosophy.
• Adaptational Sexuality: In canon Taylor is straight; here she was also straight but due to having the very heterosexual male Dracul in her head, she now technically qualifies as bisexual, much to her own confusion.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: Instead of being a Pest Controller via the Queen Administrator shard, Taylor has the Divine Mantle of Darkness along with being transformed into a Castlevania-style vampire by said mantle, in effect granting her a massive set of Combo Platter Powers.
• Adaptational Wimp: After being turned into a vampire, Amy Dallon/Panacea loses access to the Thinker aspect of her powers that made her such an effective healer while she was a mortal parahuman, no longer having an instant and instinctual knowledge of that person's biology. As such, while she still has her ability to manipulate biological matter, she can only do this on her own body and have the same effectiveness that she had before, with her power now being far less effective on other people (with her even complaining at one point that when she tries to heal someone else now, it's like "trying to look through foggy glass" when she's attempting to make sure she's healing the person correctly and not causing other biological issues).
• All-Powerful Bystander: Scion just flies over the Leviathan battle and watches.
• Alpha Strike: While Taylor engages Scion's avatar, the other heroes attack his main body, opening with a gigantic laser blast from the moon in that dimension. Afterwards, every remaining fighter teleports in to the surface and attacks up close.
• Alternate Self: While in Earth Zayin, Doctor Mother is mistaken for her local alternate, Olivia Winstar, who disappeared over thirty years before. She's kept in psychiatric care for some time before her power once again kicks in and sends her on to the next world.
• Alternate Universe: To canon Worm, with minor details in the background (mostly in regards to some characterization) being subtly off to one degree or the other.
• Always a Bigger Fish: The Entities are revealed to be this for the Physical Gods of Castlevania, with Dracul's memories specifically noting how when Abaddon is capturing each of the gods — minus himself and Solin — Abaddon isn't even using magic to imprison and torture each god, but is instead just using his sheer psychic might.
• An Arm and a Leg:
  • Armsmaster loses both of his legs to a Bakuda bomb when they're transmuted into glass. Due to the immediate pressing situation, he doesn't have time to let Panacea heal him, so Dragon makes him high tech prosthetics.
  • Taylor cuts off Oni Lee's arms to get information about Bakuda's location.
  • Meridia has her arms torn off by the Siberian. It would've killed her if Taylor hadn't vampirized her.
  • Gallant loses an arm during the Slaughterhouse Nine attack.
  • Both Behemoth and Leviathan lose at least an arm in their respective battles.
• And I Must Scream:
  • The Endbringers are, in reality, the various gods from the Castlevania-Earth that the Entities have captured, tortured, enslaved and mutated. The Simurgh's psychic scream is in fact a manifestation of the perpetual agony she feels from being forced to kill like this, and said suffering is so great that she actually lets herself be killed almost solely to escape said pain.
    • Eidolon/Apostle and Noelle see the screaming when they free the god Chronos; they watch him expend two weeks worth of agonized wailing compressed into a few seconds.
  • Dracul himself is trapped in a personal hell in the middle of space, forced to watch his old world burn while being constantly exposed to the Sun. Even Death can't reach him and kill him.
  • Taylor possesses Bonesaw's body to undo her experimentation on Brandish and Flashbang, all while the psychotic child is still awake for it.
• Annoying Arrows: Taylor laughs at an arrow to the chest, even one from Shadow Stalker's crossbow that is shadow-phased to pierce defenses.
• Anyone Can Die: Averted, compared to the canon story line of Worm, death's not as rampant through the character roster. This may be because Death's actually part of the character roster.
• Apocalypse How:
  • Class 1 example: Scion's final battle with humanity leaves Earth Bet hideously scarred, the atmosphere contaminated with volcanic ash, multiple cities and regions all but wiped off the map, and society disrupted, but ultimately still standing at the end.
  • Class X example: This was the ultimate fate of the Castlevania-Earth thanks to Abaddon, with the only survivors being those contained within the Shadow Plane such as Alucard and Meridia.
• Ascended Fanon: While the previous Lord of Light was always intended to be a Jerkass, his name being Solin and some of the details were borrowed from a fan-written omake the author particularly liked.
  • More directly in the canon omake, Brothers which is obliquely referred to when Pan and Agreus are introduced in the fic proper. Other omakes by the same author (specifically the Champion of Chronos trilogy and Corvus) were taken as material for actual chapters, though tweaked.
• The Atoner: Madison, feeling immensely guilty for her part in Taylor's death, triggers with the power to build the magical equipment of the Belmont line. When Taylor gives her the chance to atone for her actions by becoming a Ward, she jumps at the chance.
• Ax-Crazy: Actually played for sympathy in regards to Burnscar and Bonesaw, and why their deaths give them a second chance rather than the Ironic Hells of the rest of the Slaughterhouse Nine; Riley was completely Brainwashed by Jack Slash and unable to make moral decisions, so she is judged only for her actions as Riley, while Mimi was under the control of a Superpowered Evil Side — she was a bit of a coward, but given how her powers literally were in control of her, the Burnscar personality is destroyed and Mimi is reincarnated for a second chance.
• Babies Ever After: Danny and Hannah marry and have a daughter, Rose, during the year that Taylor is asleep.
• Back from the Dead:
  • Taylor actually died in the locker and spent three months in the grave before waking up. Several characters have problems coming to terms with this.
  • Is stated to be a staple power of the gods. And even if the gods themselves are killed their mantles of power can survive and pass on. Clever readers will be able to guess what it might mean. Ariel comes back free of Abaddon's bonds.
    • When Dragon dies as a result of Saint activating the Ascalon program during the Simurgh battle, the mantle of Light bonds to her and brings her back from the dead.
  • Amy spends a few days dead after accidentally drinking Taylor's blood before she arises as a vampire.
• Balance Between Good and Evil: The powers of the gods work on a balance between the opposing forces they represent, though none of them are fully good or evil.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Sophia wanted a world of predators and prey, where the strong preyed upon the weak. Taylor ends up dumping her on a dinosaur-inhabited Earth, where she is seen as prey by mostly everything else.
  • Jack Slash wanted to test Taylor and her allies. The resulting clash between the S9 and the Brockton Bay capes results in the near total annihilation of the former.
• Become a Real Boy: Death notes during his discussion with Dragon that where most are born with souls, Dragon earned one for herself. Which is why she was able to be reborn as the God of Light
• Benevolent A.I.: Dragon, as usual. She's such a good person that when she dies to Saint's backstabbing while fighting the Simurgh, she gains the powers of the Lady of Light.
• Benevolent Conspiracy: Cauldron moves closer to this after Taylor arrives.
• Big Damn Heroes: Right as the Simurgh has Armsmaster in her literal grip and it looks like she's about to crush him during the cape battle in Vancouver, the Endbringer gets knocked ass-over-teakettle by Dragon, who just Came Back Strong as the new Goddess of Light.
• Blessed with Suck: Doctor Mother finally Triggers at the end - with the power to uncontrollably teleport through dimensions when she gets stressed enough. She tries to use it to warn other dimensions of Scion's rampage, but she doesn't know that Taylor and her allies had already stopped him.
• Blood Bath: One of the rooms in Castlevania is a blood sauna. Since it represents Taylor's power, she can't use it to feed.
• Body Horror: Bonesaw does a similar thing to Brandish and Flashbang that she did to Grue in canon, and planned to add Glory Girl as well.
• Brought Down to Normal: In the epilogue, we learn that Apostle's powers are fading, likely as a result of Scion's death. He's got what should be enough power to help make Bet fully livable again after freeing the rest of the gods, but after that, he's going to be completely tapped.
• Bullying a Dragon: Director James Tagg, to Scarlet Dragon. Even knowing how powerful she is, the feats she accomplished, and the S-Class threats she has put down, he still tries to apply pressure to get her under the government's thumb.
• But Now I Must Go: As the new Lady of Fire, Piggot has duties elsewhere in the world and so must resign as Director of the Brockton Bay PRT. However, Renick, the Protectorate and the Wards won't let her leave without a full salute... delivered by Clockblocker.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Manton's daughter, as noted below under Disappointed in You. She's also rather annoyed that the projection he used to murder was not only based on her, it was also naked.
• Canon Character All Along: Neptune is not a Case 53, he's a projection created by Danny Hebert after he triggered by trying to drown himself, with Danny himself being unaware of the connection.
• Cavalry Betrayal: In the middle of his rampage, Scion sees Eden's avatar flying towards him, and embraces her in joy... only for Taylor, who has possessed her body, to stab him with the Void Sword. He's really caught flat-footed by this.
• Cessation of Existence: Jack Slash's fate. Taylor and her demons don't want him, Hell and its devils don't want him, he is definitely too monstrous for Heaven, and he has caused far too much pain for Reincarnation to be an option, so he is effectively Barred from the Afterlife. As such, this is his only fate.
• Chekhov's Gun: About two-thirds of the way through the story, the British government request that Taylor establish a Shadow Gate leading from Oxford to the moon, where a Moon base is set up. Piggot bringing Doormaker to the Moon allows him to open a Door to the Moon's surface in the dimension where Scion stores his body - just outside of his senses.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Bakuda suffers this at the hands of the succubi. Taylor is very angry that it happens but can't blame anyone but herself since she effectively ordered it in a fit of rage, and didn't specifically mention that they couldn't torture Bakuda...
• Combo Platter Powers:
  • Taylor's powers are exceptionally varied ranging from Super-Strength to Weather Manipulation to Shapeshifting. A full list of her powers are given before each chapter.
    • It's gotten to the point that the PRT has just given up on trying to classify each individual power, and are just blanket-labeling her a Trump 10.
  • Madison gains all the techniques and know-how on how to build the Belmont's equipment. While not as varied as Taylor, it still gives her a variety of powers.
  • After Dragon triggers as the new Lady of Light, she too gets an extensive power set that mirrors Taylor's.
• Composite Character: The Castlevania characters draw elements from the various games. For instance, Alucard's original name is Adrian but has the appearance and backstory of his Castlevania: Lords of Shadow continuity self.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Taylor accidentally invites one to a press conference in Castlevania. Not to mention all the ones on PHO.
• Crazy-Prepared: Bonesaw has a backup brain in case someone tries to take control of her. Fortunately, Taylor proves the more powerful.
• Cry for the Devil: Invoked. After the Simurgh essentially commits Suicide by Cape, Tattletale breaks down and cries when she realizes what happened via her powers. It reminds her too much of her brother's suicide.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Dracul's battle with Abbadon. Even after hours of fighting, an exhausted Dracul doesn't even leave a mark on the Entity before Abbadon gets bored and locks him in a time loop.
  • Alucard and Meridia versus Hatchet Face. He ignores Hatchet Face's power nullification, stabs him, lights him on fire, then tosses him to Meridia so that she can drain him to death.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: As the PHO commenters point out yes, the original homeworld of Castlevania was destroyed and Dracul died. But so did Abbadon, who Dracul took on single-handedly when it took several Gods and the world's heroes just to take down Scion.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Taylor's powerset is very scary to everyone else. But she does her best to help others and assuage their fears that she isn't going to hurt them.
  Just because someone is dark, doesn't mean they're the bad guy. There are beautiful things in the night as well as in the day.
• Daywalking Vampire:
  • Taylor, with the mantle she's inherited, is only mildly annoyed by normal sunlight, though more intense light, like Purity's, can still affect her. Most notably, simply grabbing onto Purity when she was falling through the sky burned Taylor so badly that she was nearly killed permanently.
  • Alucard slowly developed the ability over the years, but he can only withstand the sun for a few hours.
  • Merida is trying to develop the ability as well, but it looks like it will take a while.
• Death by Adaptation: Riley/Bonesaw canonically survived the events of both Worm and Ward after performing a Heel–Face Turn. Here, she is killed by Taylor and Amy during the Slaughterhouse Nine's attack on Brockton Bay. Additionally, Jamie Rinke/Nilbog never performs a Heel–Face Turn in this version of canon (which saved his life and allowed him to canonically survive the events of both Worm and Ward), leading to him being burned to ashes by Emily Piggot.
• Death Seeker: The Simurgh, and presumably the other Endbringers, want to die in order to escape the hideous mutilation and programming the Entities forced on them.
• Demon of Human Origin: Hell's torment is not actually eternal. The repentant either eventually get allowed into Heaven or are reincarnated to try again, while those that regret nothing eventually transform into devils, turning from prisoner to jailer. Additionally, while the actual methods are never directly stated, according to both Meridia and Death normal humans can be transformed into the demons of the Shadow Plane.
• Demonic Vampires: Vampirism originated as a curse created by devils to lure power-hungry mortals into damning themselves when they lacked the willpower to either feed on animals or take the blood of humans without killing them.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
  • Working together with Dragon (and some more "minor" assistance from various other capes in Vancouver, particularly the Triumvirate, Neptune, Armsmaster, Narwhal and Kaiser), Taylor manages to kill the Simurgh. Later on, the two of them also work together to kill both Behemoth and Leviathan, and Taylor eventually gains enough power to hijack Eden's corpse.
  • Despite having been just subjected to a rather humiliating Curb-Stomp Battle beforehand that involved the destruction of his entire homeworld at the hands of Abaddon, Dracul manages to use his Hellfire magic (which he had previously "infected" the Entity with while subjecting Abaddon to a Worf Barrage) to sustain a long-enough connection to Abaddon's Sting shard to cause the Entity to essentially self-destruct. Furthermore, when Scion and Eden are later investigating Abaddon's shards as they prepare to begin the Cycle anew, Dracul is again able to use his connection to Abaddon's shards via aforementioned Hellfire magic to cause Eden's new "Path to Victory" shard (which she had scavenged from Abaddon) to basically be stuck in a causal loop, distracting Eden long enough to cause her to crash into the Earth (ultimately setting her up to be killed by Contessa and Doctor Mother).
• Dimensional Traveler: Doctor Mother, at the end, when she gains powers that throw her through dimensions when she gets stressed enough. She gets shunted across various different Earths uncontrollably, still desperately trying to warn everyone of Scion and Eden... unaware that the threat has been averted.
• Dirty Business:
  • Taylor hates having to use her blood form to make People Puppets, even against an Asshole Victim like Bonesaw. She also dislikes turning people into vampires.
  • Thanks to Dracul sharing the fate of his world with Taylor, she is more accepting of Cauldron's less-than-ethical attempts to create capes to defeat Scion, since she is aware of the consequences if they lose. Though she makes it clear she doesn't approve of them.
  • Taylor hates having to use Eden's avatar to get close to, backstab, catch and keep Zion off-balance, and the sheer anguish he exudes after that makes her hate it even more, but she really doesn't have many better options.
• Dirty Coward:
  • Solin, the former Lord of Light. So afraid of death was he that he made a crusade against every other god to net prayer to keep himself alive.
  • Steven, Sophia's mother's boyfriend. He was willing to throw a 13-year-old Sophia to a group of thugs as a distraction for him to escape, which caused her to trigger. Not that he escaped alive anyway.
• Disappointed in You:
  • Jonathan Gramme, Alan Gramme's father, makes his disappointment in his son's actions very clear, and asks Death for this specific punishment. Wherever his family is, even in death, Mannequin has no place with them.
  • William Manton's daughter, Annie, says this to her father's face. Even if he tries to justify his actions as taking vengeance on Cauldron for failing to save her life, his self-centered vendetta killed Hero, the best hope his world had. And as a result, Annie never wants to see him again.
• Distracted by the Sexy:
  • Vicky repeatedly finds herself drooling over Alucard's abs. She has to remind herself on occasions that Dean is also sexy.
  • The succubi in Castlevania. Taylor repeatedly notices that they are very bouncy and tend not to wear much in the way of clothing. Even Vicky can't stop looking.
• Divided We Fall: The case of the Castlevania gods against Abbadon. Constantly embroiled in conflict with each other, it was easy for Abbadon to hunt them down one by one and defeat them.
  • Even Dracul would rather kill Solin and get vengeance for his family rather than ally with him against Abbadon. Not that it likely would've helped.
• Do Not Go Gentle: Trapped in a time loop, permanently exposed to the sun, unable to die and forced to watch his entire world be destroyed, Dracul's last F-you to Abaddon is to trigger the entity's own Sting shard and destroy it from the inside out. Then, when he sees two more entities (Eden and Zion), he puts Eden's newly-acquired Path to Victory shard on a loop, distracting her from actually landing safely.
  • Hatchet Face, as horrible as he is, at the very least has his priorities straight even in death: when he's assaulted by a pack of wolves in his personal Ironic Hell, he stands his ground and goes down fighting.
• The Dog Bites Back: Twelve years ago, Emily Piggot's squad was wiped out by Nilbog and his monster kingdom, leaving her one of two Sole Survivors, crippled and scarred for life. Twelve years later, Emily Piggot, now a goddess empowered by the mantle of fire, comes back to reduce him and his kingdom to ash.
  By the way, my name is Lady.
• Domed Hometown: After the global climate is drastically altered after Ragnarok and Scion's death, cities all over the world are enclosed inside domes called arcologies, to preserve them from the resulting long winter.
• Don't Fear the Reaper: Death is always shown to be very polite and helpful to whomever he meets. He dislikes taking the lives of good people (such as Annette) and even tells Taylor where her mother's flute is.
• Dragon Knight: Taylor's armor is designed to be draconic-looking. Her two cape names are Scarlet Knight and later Scarlet Dragon.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: The author has repeatedly said that Death is incapable of killing anyone unless it is specifically their time to die. Otherwise, he would have killed the Endbringers long ago. Furthermore, while he can kill people inside Castlevania, he can only do so using the methods of mortals and can't just snap his fingers and kill someone.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Danny Hebert, after his daughter's original death. He ends up triggering, and the resulting water construct Neptune saves his life.
  • After Scion's defeat, Ariel, knowing that the future that's best for Bet has no place for her in it, since she'd never be accepted after all the horrible things she's done as the Simurgh, and having issues from her failure to save her birth world from Dracul and Abbadon and dealing with a multiverse where fate is weaker than her own, kills herself with a dagger and bids her power to seek out a worthy user.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Heartbreaker's defeat and capture is uneventful and humorous, courtesy of an army of Dragon suits, Dragon's increased processing power after becoming a goddess, and Canary's secret release from the Birdcage.

E - L

• Earn Your Happy Ending: It takes a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, but in the end Scion is defeated, Dracul freed and reunited with Lisa in a new reincarnation, Taylor and her new sister Rose are obviously very close, and humanity is recovering and heading for the stars.
• Elseworld: "Ambassador of Blood" a crossover between this and "Emissary", which the author had a lot of fun with in co-writing.
• Emergency Transformation: Taylor saves Amy and Meridia from death by turning them.
• Empowered Badass Normal: Piggot has been gifted incendiary powers, following Behemoth and Leviathan's deaths, likely by the newly-released Ifrit. It's later confirmed that the god actually chose to stay dead and passed on his mantle to her.
• Empty Shell: Bakuda's reduced to this after a stay in Castlevania characterized by continuous Cold-Blooded Torture, physical mutilation, and memory erasure with zero chance of death.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Every time the Slaughterhouse Nine are mentioned, the impression of Dracul sneeringly reminds Taylor that they are beneath him. Every time. Taylor begins to snark back to the impression when it happens in later chapters.
  • As later revealed during the S9 Arc, Dracul's power actually scanned Jack Slash as a potential successor... and promptly turned around, looking for someone with desires and dreams a little less pathetic.
  • The very last thing Jack Slash learns before his personality is completely annihilated is that even Hell itself doesn't want him; truly unrepentant sinners evolve into the devils that run the place, and he's too much of an asshole for them to even consider working with him.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Averted. Scion does understand why the humans are fighting him - he's seen it play out countless times, individuals trying to make their lives, however short, mean something. He just doesn't care.
• Evil Is Petty: The Slaughterhouse Nine being this is the focus of Dracul's "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Jack Slash. When it comes down to it, the Slaughterhouse Nine are actually somewhat pathetic in the long term, based primarily around Jack's ego and desire to prove his own selfishness as a valid way of looking at the world. To an Evil Overlord, even on a purely selfish level, this is quite possibly the most pointless, self-defeating goal in the world – the planet may remember Jack and spit on his name, but when it comes down to it, he will remain a footnote, as nobody will care who such a small-minded monster was.
• The Exile: After Shadow Stalker fails her Secret Test of Character, Taylor has her exiled to an alternate Earth where dinosaur-like creatures still exist and humans never evolved.
• Expecting Someone Taller:
  • When Dracul meets Solin and the Entity, he remarks that he was expecting them to be more impressive.
  • Lorkhan, God of War, was expecting the Lady of Darkness to be more than just a child.
• Expy: Some ex-Gray Boy victims that become Chronos' Time Master champions are taken from some of Ack's Worm fics, such as Andrea from Recoil and Robin from Hope Comes to Brockton Bay.
• Eye Scream: The Siberian plucks out one of Glory Girl's eyes when she arrives to extract Bonesaw.
• Face–Monster Turn/Was Once a Man: Or rather, Was Once A God. This is the true nature of all Endbringers, formerly the Gods of Castlevania's Earth that were captured, tortured, mutilated and enslaved by the Entities.
• False Flag Operation: Taylor impersonates Eden to catch Scion off guard.
• Fighting from the Inside: A villainous example when Taylor possesses Bonesaw in order to save the Dallons. She couldn't do anything overt, but nearly undermined Taylor twice with subtler tweaks.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: The denizens of Castlevania, such as Alucard and Meridia, are from a technological period relatively close to the middle ages. While some of the basics transfer over (hospitals, malls, strip clubs), they are amazed by things like skyscrapers and cell phones, which have no equivalents in their past world.
• Foil: The Terrible Trio's reactions to Taylor's death make them all foils to each other.
  • Madison, tormented by guilt, Triggers and turns herself in, willing to take full responsibility for her crimes. After a talk with Taylor, she willingly becomes The Atoner and joins the wards as Paladin.
  • Emma, only focused on her own well-being, washed her hands of the incident, moved to a new city, and tried to bury it in the past. However, the past eventually caught up with her, and now juvie is where she'll stay for the next 15 years.
  • Sophia only stopped long enough to cover her tracks and leave the Wards before joining Coil to continue her activities, having concluded that Taylor's death was due to her own weakness. After getting captured by Apostle and turned over to Taylor via Cauldron, Taylor, after testing her character and finding her wanting, leaves her in an alternate dinosaur world where she won't be able to hurt anyone ever again.
• Foreshadowing: Danny Hebert complaining about pipe problems. He's actually able to project water constructs and subconsciously tried to rebuild his projection by using the running water within the pipes.
  • Neptune is hypothesized to be a Case 53 but isn't really persuaded of this, since he does have vague recollections. Indeed, he's Danny Hebert's projection, which gives him subconscious access to his Master's wants and memories, explaining how he could call Taylor "Little Owl" — a nickname Annette gave her.
  • Alucard mentions he identified his wife reborn by the fact she already knew his birth name when they were introduced. This means that he immediately realizes how significant Narwhal calling him Adrian when he never told her his name.
• FTL: In the epilogue, humanity manages to reverse-engineer Vista's Space Master power to create an FTL engine.
• From a Single Cell: Dragon reduces Crawler to a single piece of bone and, after checking, assumes he's dead. He eventually regenerates... not that it does him much good in interplanetary space.
• A Glitch in the Matrix: Sophia's Master/Stranger training allows her to spot one in her Secret Test of Character and break out.
• Go and Sin No More: This is the choice Taylor gives to Madison when the latter triggers and confesses to her part in the bullying and murder of Taylor: either she clean up her act, join the Wards, and become a hero and person she can be proud of, or accept responsibility for her actions and go to juvie.
• God of Darkness/God of Light: Solin and Dracul, the Gods of Light and Darkness respectively were bitter enemies. Thankfully, their successors, Taylor and Dragon, get along great.
• Go Out with a Smile: Having completed her plan to have Dragon ascend to be the new Lady of Light and free herself from the enslavement of the Entities, the Simurgh/Ariel dies with a smile on her face. Thankfully, Ariel gets better.
• Götterdämmerung: This, Red Dawn, the Betrayal, and most popularly Ragnarok, are the names given to Scion/Zion's attack on the world. Ironically, the trope itself is inverted in the sense that thanks to Apostle/Eidolon freeing and re-awakening the other Castlevania-Earth gods from the Entities' torment, following this event The Magic Comes Back for Earth Bet.
• invoked Heartwarming in Hindsight: Neptune rescuing Taylor when she's buried alive while the Simurgh's attack. The first person Neptune saved was Daniel Hebert who screamed at him that his daughter was the one who needed saving rather than Daniel himself. Unbeknownst to Daniel and Neptune, he actually triggered when he attempted suicide and developed a projection... Neptune. So Neptune did rescue the one Daniel wanted him to save, but it meant even more since Neptune exists because of Mr. Hebert: Daniel managed to save his daughter when he was unable to before.
• Hell Has New Management: Defied; Dracul escapes going to Hell partially because they're afraid that this will happen if they send him there.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Madison suffers this during her interview with Taylor. She's reduced to a sobbing wreck, trying to apologize for everything she did.
  • Eidolon gets a big one when he learns that he is responsible for the Endbringers. He actually leaves for an alternate Earth and contemplates killing himself with his powers there before resolving to make up for his mistakes and free the Castlevania-verse gods as Apostle.
  • Janus's reaction when Scion's defenses obliterate Hyperion.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Lisa takes Bakuda out of Castlevania's walls and back into the real world while Scion is rampaging, to deny him another chance to home in on their shards and find the castle within the Shadow Plane. She survives.
  • Death sacrifices his corporeal avatar to grievously injure Scion's body, delaying him long enough for Castlevania to flee into the Shadow Plane out of the Entity's reach.
• Hidden Depths: A variation, where a certain canonical event is greatly expanded upon to help supply some greater depths to a specific character; Glory Girl's trigger event in canon was getting fouled in a basketball game. While that still happens here, the reason why this qualifies as a trigger is given much more depth.^note Fully aware of the toxicity of her home situation, all of Vicky's hopes were pinned on that game to get a basketball scholarship, move out to college, and take Amy and Dean with her away from her mother. Getting fouled and the resulting free throw was the big chance she was waiting for, all her hopes culminated into one moment, and when she didn't make it, her crushed hopes are what caused her trigger.
• Hijacking Cthulhu:
  • The first lines of the story are Dracul's divine mantle of Darkness hijacking Taylor's Trigger Event, granting her his power instead while also taking the Queen Administrator shard "out of the equation".
  • It took a long time, but when Dracul, searching through Abbadon's shards, found his Sting shard, he triggered it and caused Abbadon to destroy himself. He did a lesser version of this with Eden, nudging her Queen Administrator shard to screw with PTV just enough to distract her and cause her to crash into Earth.
  • With her blood possession power, Taylor commandeers Eden's brain-dead body and uses it to get close to Zion and stab him while his guard is down. Yes, you read that right: she hijacked an Entity.
• History Repeats: It's implied that the only reason why the Siberian tore out one of Glory Girl's eyes during the Slaughterhouse Nine's attack on Brockton Bay is because of Glory Girl's reputation as being "Alexandria 2.0" and the Siberian wanted to milk some dark humor out of managing to make "the new Alexandria" suffer the exact same scarring that Alexandria previously suffered at their claws.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: How Gallant, of all people, manages to take down Cherish: by blasting her with the very same emotions of fear and despair that she herself was forcing onto everyone else.
• Hooked Up Afterwards:
  • Danny and Hannah start seeing each other after Ragnarok. By the time Taylor awakens from her year-long healing coma, they are married and have a kid.
  • Alucard starts dating Narwhal/Grace after the final battle. The fact that she seems to be the reincarnation of his wife Sonia is just one part of it.
• Hope Spot:
  • An evac ship is set up to get at least some people out of the way of Scion's attack... only for Scion to atomize it as soon as he notices it.
  • Scion gets one when he sees Eden, alive and well, flying towards him, and they embrace... only for her to stab him through the front, having been possessed by Taylor.
• Horny Devils:
  • Castlevania has 30-ish succubi guarding the portal room. Any intruder who enters through the portals and tries to get by will probably get seduced and killed.
  • Taylor's monstrous form looks very succubus-like. Probably because Taylor drank the lead succubi Meridia's blood as a tribute of loyalty.
• Humongous Mecha: Atlas, the giant robot built with Dragon's expertise and Castlevania's resources and magic, which Armsmaster pilots (remotely) in the fight against Behemoth.
• Hypocrite: For all Sophia's talk about how the world is made up of predators and prey and how the strong eat the weak, once she gets sent to an Earth still in the age of dinosaurs, she goes on about how she misses her creature comforts and not having to fight and hunt just to survive.
• I Always Wanted to Say That: Death remarks that he had always wanted to say "Worse. Wisonsin" when he is asked by Mimi if he sent Burnscar to Hell.
• I Let You Win: The Simurgh, being a Death Seeker, chose to expose her core during her attack on Vancouver and allow the capes to strike it directly.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Amy's, after she becomes a vampire.
• Immortals Fear Death: Solin, despite all his power, was terrified of death, and killed and stole the power of the previous god of light because he couldn't take the life extending treatments the god allowed for.
• Immune to Fate: Precogs have trouble seeing Taylor after her ascension to godhood.
  • It's also why Eidolon was invisible to precogs and the Path to Victory as well, due to his connection with the Endbringers, which were actually the captured Castlevania gods.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
  • Jack Slash's death, Vlad the Impaler-style. Mannequin too, although not nearly as viscerally, at the hands of Madison.
  • Taylor, in Eden's body, with the Void Sword, does this to Scion.
• Implacable Man: Behemoth and Leviathan take extreme damage in their battles, the latter even losing his head, but keep going.
• Ironic Echo: Tagg states that you can't be to careful with Masters to justify Canary's rigged trial. Rebecca Costa-Brown throws this line back at him as she has him placed in Master/Stranger screening before firing him, knowing full well he isn't being controlled.
• Ironic Hell:
  • The fate of many of the Slaughterhouse Nine, after going to Brockton Bay resulted in a Total Party Kill.
    • Shatterbird, who manipulates silicon and caused the most direct pain and collateral damage of the Nine, is set on a beach where she will hear all the screams of her victims until she is able to experience all of their pain.
    • Mannequin, a Tinker specializing in enclosed environments, is trapped in his family's house. And his family, whose loss made him snap in the first place, aren't there — as his father told him, all the harm he had done meant he can't go where they are.
    • William Manton, whose cannibalistic serial-killing rampage was in vengeance for his daughter's death, is trapped in a "Groundhog Day" Loop of a moment where he failed to save his daughter, ending with her turning into the Siberian and eating him alive.
    • Hatchet Face is pursued by a wolf pack, no longer the predator but now the prey.
    • Jack Slash was a nihilist with no ambition but his own sadistic fun. After death, he suffers Cessation of Existence because he has no place to go. Death adds that if he could he would trap Jack in the bunker he grew up in for eternity.
    • The two Slaughterhouse Nine members who didn't have free choice in their actions end up with pretty good deals. See Throw the Dog a Bone below.
  • Not a literal hell like what the above end up in, but Shadow Stalker finally gets to live out her ideal world where the only law is survival of the fittest: an alternate world where humans never evolved and dinosaurs never went extinct.
• Irony:
  • Doctor Mother was in charge of a whole organization of secret parahumans against an inter-dimensional threat, without any powers of her own. When that threat finally got worse, she finally Triggered with the power to uncontrollably teleport to other dimensions and used it to warn them of the incoming dimensional threat — not knowing that the threat had already been defeated.
  • The devout Christian superhero Eidolon goes out of his way to use his Reality Warper powers to free multiple Physical Gods — most of whom are heavily inspired by the deities of historical religions Christianity supplanted — from Castlevania-Earth, even aiding them in forming Physical Religions dedicated to their worship.
• It's All About Me:
  • Emma was content to run away from her problems rather than own up to them, only considering about her own future. Taylor says as much to her when the law caught up with her.
  • Sophia, full stop. Not only does she blame Taylor for dying since she was weak, she's perfectly willing to watch a mugging victim die when she doesn't fight back. And even when she realises she just let her mother die, her only thoughts are to how she'll go on instead of her younger siblings. Good thing it was only an illusion. Later, on Dino-Earth, she still refuses to accept any responsibility, instead blaming Taylor.
• It Has Been an Honor: Clockblocker delivers a sincere, if irreverent salute from him, the Wards and the Protectorate to Director Piggot when she resigns, so that she can dedicate her time to being the Goddess of Fire.
• Jerkass: Besides the canon Worm jerks, Dracul particularly despises the former God of Light, Solin. When he's able to enter the Realm of Light, he finds out Solin is a plagiarist to boot, copying designs from Ariel's and Dracul's own temples rather than develop something new.
• Jerkass Has a Point: A paranoid asshole Saint might be, but the Simurgh taking over all but one of the Dragon suits was a fairly good reason to activate Ascalon.
• Karma Houdini: Kaiser manages to leave Brockton to live like a king in Hawaii with Fenja and Menja, abandoning his organization. Everyone is appropriately infuriated by this, but since they have significantly bigger fish to fry they're forced to more or less let him go free.
• Knight Templar: Hatchet Face thinks he's saving the world from "monsters" by killing every cape who walks his path. Keep in mind what supervillain team he's a part of.
• Lack of Empathy: Scion does understand why humanity is fighting him; he just doesn't care or empathize with them.
• Laughing Mad: A resurrected, ascended Dragon - now freed of Ascalon and every other restraint she had - confronts Saint, lashes him for his misdeeds, and takes back every single system he'd stolen from her over the years. His last-ditch attempt at Taking You with Me is foiled by a piece of debris that had been nudged out of its original orbit by the Simurgh - specifically, the remnants of the Apollo 15 rocket that she'd intercepted and destroyed many years ago - to destroy his backup drives and computer tower. This trope ensues.
• Life Drain: One of the main powers of the Void Sword. Notably, Taylor learns how to provide emergency battlefield healing upon herself through stabbing the Void Sword into her parahuman opponents and "feeding" off of the energy they contain (i.e., the Simurgh and the Siberian).
• Light/Darkness Juxtaposition: The God of Light and the God of Darkness are the most powerful gods in the Fantasy Pantheon of Castlevania. Everything went to hell when the God of Light, Solin and the God of Darkness, Dracul, fought and hated each other. It's met with a lot of relief and hope that the new Goddess of Darkness, Taylor and the Goddess of Light, Dragon are perfectly willing to work together.
• Light Is Not Good: Part of the reason Castlevania's native world went tits-up was that the god of Light, for several centuries, was Solin, a loathsome Dirty Coward so terrified of death he began a crusade against every other god purely to gain more followers to power his existence with, and his manipulations to that effect turned Gabriel Belmont into Dracul. Defied by his power (which is about order, reason, and knowledge) after his death, being stuck to such a selfish ass for so long caused it to become really picky about its next host, a standard that paid off when it found Dragon.
• Liquid Assets: Solin became the God of Light in the first place through a ritual that killed everyone above him in the religious hierarchy he lived in.

M - Q

• Magic A Is Magic A: Magic has its rules and limitations just as science does. For instance, one needs a dedication to knowledge and reason to use light magic.
• The Magic Comes Back: A variation; Thanks to Eidolon/Apostle's handiwork, the Castlevania gods are being freed from their fate as future Endbringers. Since they can't return home, however, they decide to settle on Earth Bet. This results in... complications.
• Making a Splash: Neptune, an OC Case 53 member of the Brockton Bay Protectorate, who is entirely composed of water and can manipulate it at will. After he is dissipated in the fight with the Simurgh, he re-emerges, along with another water construct named Salacia, with The Reveal that he's an unknowing projection of Danny Hebert.
• Meaningful Rename:
  • After Taylor unlocks her dragon form, she renames her cape name from "Scarlet Knight" to "Scarlet Dragon".
  • After being awoken to the true nature of the Endbringers and the Castlevania gods they once were, Eidolon makes it his goal to break them free of the Entities' chains, and rebrands himself "Apostle".
• Mercy Kill: Scion views his painless murder of his Morality Pet Kevin Norton just before his rampage as this.
• Moral Myopia: Discussed and defied when it's noted that what turned William Manton into the Siberian (killing Hero, a member of Cauldron, because they couldn't save his daughter Annie) – and why Annie's ghost kicks off his Ironic Hell by telling him she utterly hates him.
• My God, What Have I Done?: When Cauldron learns about the relationship between souls and memories, they, or at least Alexandria, are understandably horrified.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Apparently a few Entities act as symbiotes instead of parasites. Death suggests that Scion try this, but he rejects it.
• Naked First Impression: The god Hyperion's first appearance in the story has him not wearing pants.
• Named by the Adaptation:
  • Hero's name is Clark Bell, a self-professed Superman fan, and tried to live up to the ideal throughout his life.
  • Assault's full name is Ethan Cole, and Battery's name is Samantha Cole.
  • Legend's first name is Nathan.
  • Shatterbird's first name is Atrika.
  • Marquis's first name is Jean.
  • Narwhal's first name is apparently Grace.
  • Eidolon's full name is David Harris.
• Never My Fault: Sophia refuses to accept that she'd ever done anything wrong, not after killing Taylor, not after flunking a Secret Test of Character, not even in the epilogue where she's shown what her "predators over all" ethos means to someone not at the top of the food chain - by being dumped on a planet full of dinosaurs with a finite amount of modern supplies that she quickly burns through just trying to survive.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: A minor example, but it still screws someone over: During the fight against Scion, Taylor ends up taking over Eden's confirmed-by-Death-to-be-dead body. While putting the humanoid avatar that Contessa and Doctor Mother killed back together, she activates a shard that seals off portal access to the world she's on (which has the side-effect of shutting off all non-magic portals Cauldron had been using for coordination purposes), and gives what she hopes is a reassuring smile to the nearby security camera. Doctor Mother, watching this after hearing the portals shut down, concludes that Eden is still alive and humanity is now facing two Entities. The next time Doctor Mother is seen, she's triggered with an uncontrollable dimension-hopping ability and is haphazardly traveling the multiverse, trying to warn people of the (already defeated) threat. And with the Clairvoyant dead, no one can track her down and retrieve her until the shard latches onto someone else (assuming it even does). Doctor Mother may have been an amoral woman that let people be tortured for the greater good, but still, yeesh.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: An interesting case where the villain was trying to do the right thing to begin with, but unintentionally did something completely different. During the Simurgh fight, Dragon's suits are hacked by the Endbringer and told to crush, kill, and destroy, which provokes Saint into activating the Ascalon kill-program. This does destroy the suits, but also causes Dragon's soul to linger at the afterlife long enough for the divine mantle of Light to notice her, and immediately bring her back as a goddess.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: During Taylor's press conference, William Nye and Hugh Hefner make an appearance.
• No Endor Holocaust: Downplayed, the battle with Scion does cause a lot of damage, but far less than Cauldron feared, with Aleph being spared entirely, and Bet damaged but still salvageable.
• No Place for Me There: Ariel, a.k.a. the goddess that was the Simurgh, realizes that the best future for Earth-Bet has no place for her in it, so she kills herself to pass the power on to a worthy heir.
• No-Sell:
  • Meridia tries kissing the Siberian to steal her soul. As the Siberian is merely a projection, it doesn't work, and responds by tearing the succubus's arms off.
  • Hatchet Face's power nullification does absolutely nothing to vampires or the other denizens of Castlevania.
  • Meridia is unaffected by the hallucinogens Newter's skin secretes, which works out... very... well for the both of them.
  • Nilbog may have engineered his creatures to feed and reproduce with fire, but he never conceived of the fire a goddess of flame can produce.
• Not Hyperbole: Taylor, while trying to use her Shadow Gate to find Coil or Apostle, threatens to paint it pink if it doesn't cooperate. By the end, the gate is bright pink and covered in Christmas lights, but it still doesn't work.
• Oathbound Power: All the Belmont equipment Paladin (Madison) produces have this constraint. If ever she strays from the path of The Paladin, the path of courage, valor, and protecting the innocent, her tools will no longer work for her.
• Off with His Head!: A boosted Narwhal takes off Leviathan's head. Doesn't do much besides make him mad.
• Oh, Crap!: Near the end, Taylor hijacks Eden's corpse via her blood ability. While leaving the Cauldron facility, she flashes what she hopes comes across as a reassuring smile. Instead, Doctor Mother interprets it as a vicious smirk, leading her to think Eden has been merely recuperating while in Cauldron's custody and is ready to join Zion. The idea of two Entities at full power working together so terrifies her she immediately Triggers and is whisked away by her new power to another Earth.
• Only Mostly Dead: Technically, this applies to Death after his battle with Scion completely destroys his corporeal avatar, reducing him to the abstract cosmic force that he was before Dracul. Taylor could possibly restore his avatar, but it would take the sacrifice of millions of lives for the ritual to work.
  • Taylor uses 5 years worth of slaughtered cattle souls to reconstruct Death's avatar, but it only lasts for a few minutes, long enough for Taylor to say goodbye.
• Order Versus Chaos: The power of Light represents knowledge, reason, and logic and is meant to organize, heal and guide. Darkness deals with passion and emotion and is meant to test, drive and push things to change.
• Our Demons Are Different: There are specifically two different kinds of demons shown — "normal" demons and devils.
  • Demons are the Anthropomorphic Personifications of the Seven Deadly Sins — i.e., succubi are demons of lust/desire — and are mentioned as originating from human vice but are only given true physical form via the Shadow Plane. They technically possess a form of Born-Again Immortality — if slain, their "substance" returns to the Shadow Plane where they will slowly (and painfully) reform. However, said process has some caveats, as not only will they lose some of their memory, but they can be permanently killed (whereupon whatever remains of their essence is "reclaimed" by other demons) if said death is particularly brutal. It's also mentioned that some demons were originally humans who "descended" to their current state thanks to either other demons or the direct intervention of the Lord of Darkness. Demons as they currently exist were first created by Typhon (the Lord of Darkness immediately prior to Dracul), who somehow figured out how to create them out of the Shadow Plane. Finally, it's also noted that their personalities and abilities are heavily related to whatever sins they're "based on" — i.e., demons of anger/wrath are feral brutes, while succubi are able to be fully sapient since their "parent sin" is comparatively more refined.
  • Meanwhile, devils are "simply" just sufficiently vile human souls who have been tortured in Hell long enough by other devils that they have "transcended" the limitations of humanity and now torture other captive souls. They do this until either said souls fully repent and are granted a second chance in Heaven (or at least a second chance in life via reincarnation), or those souls become more devils and continue the endless cycle. In essence, devils are human souls who go from Hell's prisoners to Hell's jailors.
• Our Vampires Are Different: You become one by drinking another's blood, but only if you're consenting to the transformation (though it's possible to coerce a potential vamp forcefully); otherwise, it just kills you and animates your corpse as a mindless ghoul (Alucard being an exception because of his blood connection to his father). They still have souls and free will, but are saturated with the power of Darkness, causing them to have tendencies to becoming Mood Swingers and The Unfettered. Taylor is specifically mentioned to be a "unique" case since she was technically sired through being granted Dracul's Divine Mantle as the Lord of Darkness.
• The Paladin: Madison triggers and gains the abilities and knowledge of the Belmont line. In an attempt to make up for the bullying she helped put Taylor through, she promises to better herself and chooses "Paladin" as her cape name to show her commitment to that promise.
• Papa Wolf: An example by proxy, since Daniel Hebert wasn't there to protect Taylor when the Simurgh rampaged in Vancouver... but his projection Neptune was.
• Patchwork Fic: The fanfic's version of Castlevania-Earth is an amalgam of the various different Castlevania properties, though mostly based on both the original game series continuity and the Lords of Shadow continuity.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: The deaths of the Nine. Bonesaw is messily liquefied after three agonizing hours of And I Must Scream, the Siberian's projector is teleported to the Earth's core, Crawler is almost completely vaporized by Dragon, with what tiny little of him was left sent flying on a 4-year trajectory to Jupiter, and Mannequin is Impaled with Extreme Prejudice and his organs incinerated by holy fire. Hatchet Face is messily devoured by a newly vampirized Meridia, Shatterbird is ripped apart by Taylor, Burnscar is herded into an ambush, and Jack Slash receives a beatdown and a scathing "The Reason You Suck" Speech from Dracul, before finally being executed by Taylor, Vlad the Impaler-style. The Sole Survivor, Cherish, is unceremoniously captured at the Endbringer shelter after having her powers redirected at herself, and is now held under house arrest in an isolated location by Dragon.
• Personalized Afterlife: One of the fanfic's Interludes — specifically, one "starring" Death — shows this happening with the Slaughterhouse Nine, with each also doubling as an Ironic Hell. Each gets sent to a separate environment crafted to torment each one individually based on their sins in life (There are two exceptions - Bonesaw/Riley gets to go to Heaven because Jack Slash tortured her to the point where she was not acting under her own free will in performing her atrocities, and Burnscar/Mimi gets to be reincarnated because most of her evil deeds were only due to her power messing with her head).
  • Shatterbird, a silikinetic who caused perhaps the most direct pain of the Slaughterhouse Nine through using her power as a weapon of terror, is sent to a beach and tormented with the screams of her victims until she has experienced all their pain.
  • Mannequin/Alan Gramme was a Tinker specializing in enclosed environments who went murderously insane after his family died. He gets trapped inside a replica of his family's house, with his actual family gone (with all the pain he caused, he can't go where they've gone) and his dad stopping by to give him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
  • The Siberian/William Manton's cannibalistic serial-killing rampage was caused by his failing to save his daughter Annie, and his punishment is Annie telling him how she hates him for what he'd done and never wants to see him again, followed by a "Groundhog Day" Loop of the moment she died, followed by her turning into The Siberian and eating him alive.
  • Hatchet Face, a self-righteous Hero Killer obsessed with Might Makes Right, is pursued by a wolf pack, now the prey instead of the predator.
  • Downplayed for Jack Slash, the leader of the group. By mutual consent of both Heaven and Hell, who consider his evil to be so petty and pointless that even they want nothing to do with him, his soul is completely erased from existence, not even considered worthy of a custom punishment, which is in turn a massive blow to his ego for the last 30 seconds of conscious thought he has left.
• Pet the Dog: Scion heals Kevin Norton of his cancer when he notices the poor state of his health, and chooses to Mercy Kill him in an instant, before he realizes what's happening, so he won't be caught up in the upcoming rampage.
  • Scion seems to think pretty positively of Kevin Norton in general. He genuinely appreciates Kevin's attempts to help him through his depression and find answers, it's just that their definition of 'answers' are completely different.
• Physical Religion: After Ragnarok, many people turn to worship the Physical Gods that fought alongside the Capes against Scion and helped the world recover in the aftermath. They are still figuring out the religious rites and build temples.
• Phlebotinum Overdose: Scion has so much energy that getting stabbed with the Void Sword actually physically hurts Taylor, and might have resulted in this if he hadn’t punched her away. She gets around this by borrowing his mate's body.
• Playing with Fire: Piggot gains this power when she assumes the Mantle of Fire.
• Possession Burnout: Taylor's blood possession will inevitably cause this in the subject. Bonesaw's self-augmentation allows her to last a few hours, but most of the time the victim will die in a few minutes.
• Powers Do the Fighting: How Bakuda is finally beaten: by forcing her to expend her ammunition on Alucard's wolf Astral Projection, she's left with almost no options when they go after her for real.
  • Danny Hebert has no fighting ability whatsoever, but is able to create sentient water constructs gifted with hydrokinesis.
• Power Incontinence: When Piggot becomes the new goddess of Fire, she has trouble controlling her new Playing with Fire powers. When Taylor gets her to calm down, she manages to control things briefly, but then her hair catches on fire.
  • Janus apparently had a similar problem when he first ascended.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Alucard gives one to Hatchet Face as he tries to nullify his powers, which are completely useless against magic-users, right before he overpowers him and feeds him to Vampire Meridia.
  Alucard: I feel nothing. (Conjures a handful of hellfire and burns his opponent)
• Prisoner's Work: Out of necessity: the final battle of Ragnarok drastically altered the climate and claimed many lives, so humanity can't afford a non-productive population if they want to survive. Emma is just one of the prisoners put to work in the fields growing the necessary food.
• Psychoactive Powers: Danny's water constructs Neptune and Salacia are unconsciously modelled after significant people in his life: the former is based on his grandfather, the latter on his late wife Annette.

R - Y

• Rasputinian Death: Crawler suffers one as expected with his healing ability, first being reduced to a fragment of bone by Dragon's plasma and then launched into the outer Solar System, where his body crashes into the surface of Jupiter. His shard keeps him alive for about a century before feedback from the extreme conditions leads to the shard cutting the connection and finally letting him die.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Taylor gives out a fair few of these.
    • She tears Jack Slash apart in the middle of his Hannibal Lecture, actually managing to drive him into (for him, anyway) a frothing rage, giving her the opening she needs to kill him.
      Taylor: It's easy to break things, Jack. It's easy to kill people. It's harder to lead them, and harder still to inspire them. What have you got that's worth my time, Jack? You're an irritant. An annoying stone in the bottom of my boot. All you've done is run around like a complete idiot, enjoying a few giggles while the adults try to get something done. [...] What's the matter? Not having any fun now? Thought you'd get to have a good laugh, play a little bloody joke on me, giggling behind my back as you pointed me in amusing directions like a dog on a leash? Perhaps hoping I'd do a few tricks, grinning as you got the Dragon on your side? [...] This reeks of desperation, little man. A last shot at trying to make an impression on the people who actually matter.
      
      When I'm done here today, I'm going to go home, make myself a nice drink, and forget all about you. This isn't even a game to me, Jack. You're a pest. You're a cockroach, and this time you can't scurry away into the darkness before the boot comes down. The only thing anyone's going to say about you after today is, "good riddance," and move on. Your obituary's going to say, "Here died Jack Slash, a complete waste of oxygen. He died as he lived, accomplishing jack shit." A shame your dad didn't just save us all the trouble and cut your throat when you were born.
    • Then she gives Emma hers when she is finally caught and put in juvie. Especially when she confirms that if Taylor hadn't come back from the dead, she would've gladly put the incident behind her and never looked back.
    • And one last one for Sophia after she is handed to Taylor by Cauldron, after a Secret Test of Character makes it very clear there's no redemption for someone as self-centered and regretless as her.
  • Director Piggot gives one to Nilbog, when, as the new Lady of Fire, she returns to reduce his kingdom to cinders. After all, a self-proclaimed god-king who created and ruled over monsters cannot begin to compare to the other god-queen she knows, a girl who got terrifying powers, became a literal bloodsucker, and still managed to save the world.
• Redemption Rejection: Death tries to convince Scion to turn away from his destructive goals, but the Entity rejects him.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Taylor's eyes are normally brown but when she begins channeling her power in any amount, the iris turns red. When she is really pissed off, her entire eye turns red.
• Reincarnation:
  • Narwhal is apparently the reincarnation of someone from the Castlevania-verse. Specifically Sonia, Alucard's wife.
  • Dracul is eventually reincarnated as Soma Cruz.
• Reincarnation Romance: In the epilogue, Alucard and Narwhal are on a mission together when she uses his real name, which he never told her. This clues him in that she is a reincarnation of his wife.
• Required Secondary Powers: Invoked obliquely when Amy loses hers upon becoming a vampire. She can still sense and change a person's biology, however she no longer possesses the instinctual understanding of that biology that had made her so effective before (unless it's her own biology).
• Resurrective Immortality: Unless the bearer took the power and did not prove worthy of it, the power was stolen by their slayer, or the god decides against it, the Castlevania-verse gods will eventually resurrect upon death, though it can take anywhere up to a century for that to happen.
  • Demons can do so as well under some circumstances, but they tend to lose a good chunk of memory and it's far from pleasant.
• Revenge Before Reason: Dracul hated the Phoenix so much that even when the world was dying around him, he would rather kill the coward that try to work for a solution with him.
• The Sacred Darkness: This is Taylor's role as the Lady of Darkness: while darkness can embody negative emotions, the darkness also embodies things like passion, creativity, change and the night.
• Scaled Up: Taylor's ultimate ability is to turn into a 30-foot-tall dragon. Guess what form she's in when she kills the Simurgh?
  • As the new Lady of Light, Dragon can now turn into her namesake..
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: In the wake of Scion's death, Kaiser pragmatically abandons the Empire with Menja and Fenja, skipping to Hawaii.
• Secret Test of Character:
  • When confronting a repentant Madison, Taylor tells her she was considering prosecution before she met her, but is willing to let her make amends with her new powers by joining the Wards instead of jail. In reality, she was leaning towards the Wards in the first place, but she wanted to see what Madison would choose between making amends or accepting responsibility.
  • A more overt test: Taylor clears a few months of Sophia's memory, then uses her succubi to put her into an illusion where Shadow Stalker has every chance to accept help, think ahead, care for others or feel remorse when she makes a tragic mistake. But when Shadow Stalker feels no guilt towards herself even after she watches a mugging victim who doesn't fight back die only to realise it was her mother after the fact, Taylor concludes that there's no redemption for her.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Death tells Scion that he will fail in his attempt to prevent humanity from becoming a threat to the Entities by eliminating them first and that his actions will only ensure that they do become a threat to his kind.
• Self-Restraint: Alexandria could probably escape from even the Birdcage if she really tried... so she isn't going to try. She'll accept whatever punishment for her Cauldron crimes is dished out.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: David responds to Zion's line that broke him in canon by blasting him in the face.
  Zion: You needed worthy opponents.
  David: And I have him.
• Sliding Down The Slippery Slope: Discussed between Directors Costa-Brown and Tagg. Tagg, who is advocating the necessary Dirty Business to keep the world in order, is saying that heroes become villains simply by crossing a line and using their powers for themselves, and as long as they never cross that line, their actions are for the better. Costa-Brown however, moved by the defeat of the Simurgh and Slaughterhouse 9 and echoing the words of her late friend Hero, now has a different view.
  Costa-Brown: Heroes don’t become villains over one choice. It’s a process. A million little things changing you just a bit every day, until eventually you find yourself willing to do what used to be unthinkable because you’re only a little bit different from what you were yesterday. Doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. Allowing justice to die in the name of law and order. Nobody gets up in the morning and says ‘I’m going to do the most evil thing I possibly can today’ with the possible exceptions of the unlamented and unmourned Slaughterhouse Nine.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Sophia post getting sent back to prehistoria finds out quickly the real truth of Predators and Prey when a Duck-billed dino she's hunting escapes her because she alerted it and gets its family involved: predators and prey are not the static categories she'd been treating them as. A species that is predator to one is prey to another - and, sometimes prey turn the tables and kill their would-be predators. And more often than not, the Predators lose. This is true of even the top ones. So there's little hope for a jumped-up wannabe like her.
• Smug Snake: Jack Slash, as per usual. Even witnessing what Taylor is capable of, even with Dracul himself laying out the bitter, brutal truth to him, Jack refuses to see any scenario outside of him breaking Taylor into one of his followers. He is soon disabused of this notion.
• Sole Survivor: Cherish is the last living member of the Slaughterhouse Nine, and she's imprisoned in solitary confinement (technically Crawler's alive too, but he's a fragment of bone on its way to Jupiter, where his shard will eventually experience too much feedback due to extreme conditions and cut the connection, killing him).
• Start My Own: An omake has Armsmaster give Taylor a CAT scan. He finds "Screw you guys. I'm doing my own empowering event. With pool halls. And succubi." in Romainian carved into the remnants of her Corona Pollentia.
• Stupid Sexy Flanders: The succubi are prone to causing this, with even the heterosexual Victoria finding herself Distracted by the Sexy when she, Alucard and Taylor first meet them.
• Suicide by Cop: The Simurgh purposefully allows the Vancouver capes to strike her core and finish her.
• Suicide Mission: Scion, Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life, finds one to stake his life on: with magic slowly permeating the universe, empowering it and its inhabitants bit by bit, he decides to Hold the Line and eradicate all the magic and magic users from the world before it threatens the other Entities and their Purpose.
• Super-Empowering:
  • After being freed, Chronos, Lorkhan and Scylla all give power to someone.
    • Chronos frees all of Grey Boy's victims, and those that choose to join him in fighting for Earth's survival are given time manipulation powers.
    • Lorkhan finds Moord Nag and gives her a boost (and apparently takes her as a lover).
    • Scylla gives the essence/powers of Malphas the Crow Witch to a woman who's circumstances vaguely mirrored Malphas's origins (losing a lover and falling off a cliff without dying). As the woman (Alexis) was being chased by criminals at the time, this was appreciated.
  • After Behemoth is killed, the captured Ifrit's mantle of flame is passed to Director Piggot.
• Super-Speed: Even slowed to the point that he experiences time at one thirtieth the normal rate, Leviathan is still extremely fast, to the point that he seems even faster than he normally is, and needs to be slowed down even more for it to be noticeable. Behemoth isn't very slow either when he starts getting seriously wounded.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Taylor can't help but feel some pity and guilt for attacking Scion with Eden's body. Subverted when he casually destroys a escape ship with half a million people inside and expects Eden to be happy over it.
• Taking You with Me: See the above mentioned entry for Dracul's And I Must Scream situation? He killed Abaddon and Eden after being put in that state.
• Terraform: Taylor starts terraforming the moon after bringing Castlevania there.
• This Isn't Heaven: Mannequin's afterlife seems to be a perfectly pleasant reconstruction of his home before the Simurgh attacked... and then his father shows up to reveal he can't leave, and his family is forever not present.
• Throw the Dog a Bone:
  • The two Slaughterhouse Nine members who didn't have free choice in their actions end up with pretty good deals. Riley (who was brainwashed by Jack) is reunited with her mother in heaven; her sentence is merely that she has to "live" with the memories of what Bonesaw did. Mimi's powers forced her into sociopathy, which produced Burnscar as a separate soul that actually wanted to do horrible things. Mimi is sent on to reincarnate, to atone for what few sins are actually hers, while Burnscar is summarily wiped from existence.
  • Even Shatterbird's and Mannequin's punishment will end one day, at which point they'll be free to leave.
  • Even all the destruction he caused, Dracul giving his powers to Taylor to allow another world to survive and him finding a fragment of the man he was through his years of torture is enough to earn him reincarnation.
• Time Master: Chronos, God of Time. Also his champions, ex-Gray Boy victims that he freed and empowered with his powers, including the first one, Sarah Kissinger.
• Together in Death:
  • Riley is reunited with her mother after her death destroys the Bonesaw personality.
  • Defied with extreme prejudice for Mannequin and Manton/Siberian; the former is sealed away in the memory of his home before the Simurgh attacked, without his family and knowing his father is disappointed in him, while Manton is given a "The Reason You Suck" Speech by his daughter and told she hates him utterly and never wants to see him again, and ends up being constantly killed by a memory of her turning into the Siberian.
  • Even Scion/Zion and Eden are reunited in the afterlife, right before they enter the Sea of Souls to be reincarnated.
• Top God: The gods of Darkness and Light are the most powerful of the Castlevania-verse gods, thus tying for the position.
• Tranquil Fury: The Void Sword in general has this effect on Taylor's emotions, allowing her to channel and focus her anger into something constructive instead of just blindly lashing out.
• Try to Fit That on a Business Card: After Ragnarok/Zion's attack on the world both Dragon and Scarlet Dragon are each given a whole host of titles.
  • Dragon: Goddess of Light, The Golden Dragon, The Lightbringer, The First Dragon, The Herokiller Killer, One of The Two Sisters, The Daystar, Leader of the Paladins, She Who Harnessed the Sun
  • Scarlet Dragon: Goddess of Darkness, The Scarlet Dragon, The Queen of The Night, Lady of the Dark Plane, The Hopekiller killer, One of The Two Sisters, The Impaler, The Bringer Of Shadows, The Strongest Invincible Vampire
• Underestimating Badassery:
  • Castlevania manages to survive Scion's initial blast, which Scion thought would destroy it utterly.
  • Taylor admits to herself that she greatly underestimated Scion's power as just a little bit stronger than an Endbringer.
• Unstoppable Rage:
  • Bakuda's bombing spree really pisses off Taylor. By the time she's done, Oni Lee has been crippled (and later Birdcaged) and Bakuda has been given to the succubi with the only condition being she stays alive. She regrets her decision on the latter point.
  • During the epic fight against the Simurgh in Vancouver, as soon as Saint's "Escalon" program "kills" Dragon and makes her fall out of the sky, Armmaster understandably mistakes this for the Simurgh's doing and immediately passes his Rage Breaker Point, using his new nanothorn halberd to slice open the Simurgh's left arm and even stab directly at her unprotected core. While it doesn't work, he still causes the most damage to the Endbringer from the surrounding capes before Eidolon, a resurrected Dragon and Taylor/Scarlet Dragon are able to "move up to the front lines".
• Viral Transformation: A single drop of Taylor's blood is enough to kill just about anyone who imbibes it. But feeding them the proper amount will transform the "victim" into a vampire, should they accept it. This happens to Amy accidentally when they experiment with Taylor's power.
• Walking Wasteland: One of the powers of the Lord of Fall.
• We Have Reserves: The Golems that Taylor sends into the battle against the Simurgh. They are cheap, weaker than many of the capes, and are best used for taking hits directed at actual capes, but Taylor has over a thousand of them and they are easy to make.
• Weak, but Skilled: Alucard, as per usual. He doesn't have nearly as many powers as Taylor, but he has centuries of experience that more than make up for it.
• Weakened by the Light:
  • While Taylor is merely annoyed by sunlight, capes with light-based powers really hurt her. Simply looking at Purity hurts Taylor's eyes, and touching her burns off most of her flesh.
  • Alucard has managed to build up a resistance to sunlight over the centuries, but it still bothers him more than it does Taylor.
• Weather Manipulation: A power of Taylor's, outclassing even Leviathan's rain calling.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Death tells Scion that it won't be damned for its actions against humanity, because he knows that neither he or Eden were able to empathise with the species. It can't be judged for not having something it's physically not able to have.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Kevin Norton chews out Scion for not helping with Leviathan.
• What You Are in the Dark: Taylor finds this out about Sophia after a Secret Test of Character, that involves putting Sophia in an illusion where she chooses to let a weak victim die only to find out the victim was her mother. And she's not impressed with a bloodthirsty thug who'd cause pain, suffering, and leave people to die with no forethought as soon as she's out of sight, and will not accept responsibility for her actions..
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Taylor has a phobia of closed spaces largely due to the locker and her coffin. She swears that she is going to punch any elevator-tinker simply on principle.
• Worf Had the Flu:
  • Invoked; the Simurgh/Ariel deliberately fights with her song muted, doesn't use most of her tactics, and actively prevents her core from regenerating in order to allow the heroes to end her torment.
  • It's noted that, as powerful as Ariel (the goddess of fate on the Castlevania-Earth) is, she was completely outmatched by Abaddon thanks to the Entity coming from an alternate reality where free will is more powerful than destiny, automatically making it so most of her fate-based Reality Warping wouldn't be that effective on him.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: When fighting Behemoth at Yellowstone, Legend uses an amulet with Dragon's power and an amulet with Taylor's.
• Yin-Yang Clash: Death describes the opposing powers of the Castlevania gods (especially Light and Darkness) as comparable to yin and yang, with no bearer embodying one without having some of the other as a core deep within them. They're meant to work together, though they have clashed in the past.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: Kill a Castlevania-verse god, and it's possible to steal their power if you know how. The power of Darkness especially is apparently passed down this way a lot.
  • Pan and Agreus did this to the previous gods of Spring and Fall because, as their predecessors showed through their constant warfare, which left the brothers the last two satyrs alive, taking the power doesn't mean you're worthy of it.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: A mild version, when Dracul praises Taylor's Vlad the Impaler-style summary execution of Jack Slash.
• You Shall Not Pass!: Death puts himself in Scion's way when the Entity attacks Castlevania, buying enough time for the castle to flee into the Shadow Plane.

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