Sorcha's mention of Orlok struck a deep, jarring chord in Dracula's memory. The name evoked not only the terror of unchecked power, but a specific era, a memory buried beneath more than a century of unlife: the opulent, doomed steel behemoth, the RMS Titanic.
1912, Dracula thought, as the Red Wizards waited for his answer in the gloom of the Cancun terrace. The year of floating human arrogance. He had been aboard, of course. He traveled with the stealth granted by his resources and nature, mingling with the human elite, observing their ephemeral lives with a mixture of disdain and anthropological curiosity.
But he wasn't alone in the shadows of that ocean liner. He remembered sensing another presence, one much older and... erroneous. It wasn't the controlled darkness of a vampire of noble lineage, nor even the chaotic but recognizable signature of a wizard. It was something brittle, alien, a discordant note in the night's symphony.
And then he saw him—or rather, sensed him—in the less-traveled corridors, on the decks swept by the icy Atlantic wind. Count Orlok. Not the charming aristocrat some of his kind emulated, but the gaunt, cadaverous figure with claw-like fingers and eyes that burned with a dead light, just as whispered legends and later crude cinematic depictions would portray him. Even then, Dracula remembered, there had been something unstable about him. A primal, hungry power barely contained behind a facade of unnatural stillness. They had met eyes once, a silent recognition between apex predators, but Dracula had felt repulsion, not affinity. Orlok was... different. A relic of an older, wilder night.
He also remembered the rumors circulating in occult circles before he set sail. The Vatican... Pope Pius X... It was said that the Holy See had been actively trying to hunt or trap Nosferatu in Europe. That agents of the Church, perhaps from some secret order of hunters, were hot on his trail. Was Orlok fleeing to the New World on that ship? Was the voyage itself a trap set by Rome? He was never sure.
Then came the ice. The impact. The chaos. Dracula watched the tragedy unfold with detached calm. Human panic was predictable. For him, escaping the sinking steel mass was trivial. But amid the pandemonium, in the desperate scramble for lifeboats under the icy starlight, others of his kind were not so careful. He saw a pair of French neophytes, dazzled by luxury and careless, expose their inhuman speed. He saw a normally discreet old Italian rival lose control and recklessly feed on a victim on an overcrowded boat. The scale of the disaster, the presence of possible Vatican agents, and simple bad luck exposed several vampires that night, causing a silent crisis in the supernatural underworld for years. A lesson in discretion many forgot.
And Orlok? Dracula remembered feeling his cold, alien presence abruptly vanish as the Titanic broke apart and sank into the icy depths. Like most, he assumed the immense pressure of the abyss and the utter darkness had finally claimed the creature, or trapped it forever in a tomb of steel and icy water.
But the abyss is not always a grave, Dracula thought now, the connection forming in his mind with icy certainty. If Cthulhu can dream and wake in the depths... why not Orlok? The Red Wizards said he had become uncontrollable after their encounter in Prague. Did that mean the Titanic incident wasn't the end? That the creature not only survived, but perhaps... thrived in the crushing darkness?
He recalled fragments of information that had recently reached him through his own networks of influence, reports dismissed as legends of drunken sailors or psychic interference from Cthulhu's awakening: ships vanished without a trace in the vicinity of the Titanic's wreck, crews found dead, bleeding to death, wearing expressions of unspeakable terror.
It feeds, Dracula realized with a new and profound unease. It is not trapped. It is hunting. Growing stronger in the darkness of the North Atlantic. The creature the Red Wizards had helped empower and then failed to control, the same creature that had survived the most famous sinking in history, was still active. Another ancient power, unpredictable and monstrous, loose in a world already teetering on the brink.
He looked at Sorcha and her two companions. Their offer, their fear of the "abominations," now took on a new dimension. They knew of Orlok's danger because they had experienced it firsthand. Firsthand. Their knowledge could be vital.
"You have mentioned Orlok," Dracula said slowly, his voice barely above a whisper. "And you have mentioned other... errors of the blood. Tell me all you know. Where they lurk. How powerful they have grown." He paused, his red eyes piercing the darkness. "And tell me more of those rituals... to dull the sun's scorch. Perhaps, Red Wizards, our mutual survival depends on the truth... and on pacts forged in the deepest desperation."
The need for the rings was now inseparable from knowledge about these other threats. Dracula was willing to listen, to consider the unholy alliance, for the world had grown infinitely more dangerous, and old enemies and past mistakes were returning to haunt the night.