Laura


Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
 Gabriel meets Laura in the castle, where she puts him through trials and attempts to kill him

Laura was the stepdaughter of Carmilla, the Vampire Lord. Their relationship was formed centuries before when Carmilla killed her parents and turned them into vampires. Thus, Laura became Carmilla's "daughter."

When Gabriel Belmont breached the castle's halls, Laura, who seemed quite out of place in such a setting, pointed him in the direction of a Chess puzzle. "If you play my game," she said, "I'll tell where she--my mother--is!" When Gabriel showed hesitation, she began pouting incessantly until he gave in and took her up on the challenge. When he successfully cleared the trial, much to her dismay, Laura as promised provided clarification; she properly introduced herself and explained that she had been long ago turned into a vampire, doomed to a cruel life. Still, she felt, she had a role to play in the grand scheme. Though she had no further information to share, she admitted that her mother certainly knew, somehow, that Gabriel had arrived.

Flustered, she decided to continue stalking Gabriel and ran into him in the Chromatic Observatory. She was annoyed that he was able to continue successfully solving the castle's many puzzles and in a whiny way accused him of cheating, thereafter demanded that he pay the price for his insolence. She commanded her deadly toys--puppets that she brought into existence using a dark spell of her own making--to attack Gabriel. After he endured yet another of her challenges, the increasingly frustrated Laura began shocking him with deadly lightning magic, pushing him to the brink of death. It was only thanks to the appearance of Marie's spirit that Laura ceased her assault. As Gabriel and Marie's visage embraced, the pained Laura lay witness, envious of the pair's shared affection; somehow touched by this display, she no longer wanted to play games. Perhaps she could remember the feeling of her true mother's arms around her--the comfort she felt in those days before she became a dark creature. Whatever the case, she would interfere in his current mission no more.

Sometime after he defeated the Lords of Shadow, the distressed, lonely Laura telepathically contacted Gabriel and requested that he return to the former Bernhard castle. He answered her call and listened as she explained to him the unintentional fallout from the Lords' defeat and specifically the release of the Forgotten One, which would seek vengeance on the Brotherhood and reduce the world to ashes; too, she explained how the three founders originally sealed the demon within a dimensional rift and where the entrance to this prison lay. She had to coax the shattered Gabriel into helping her hunt down this new threat, since he claimed to now be bereft of humanity. When he finally gave in, the pair traveled beneath the castle and located the founders' original tower, where they used a magical clock to rewind time--back to an era when the tower's top level was accessible. There they used three blood orbs, which contained the founders' life fluids, to activate the portal that led into the dimensional rift.

As he moved to enter the portal, she stopped him in his tracks, warning that only dark beings could survive on the other side. He already considered himself a "dark shadow," but Laura countered that he also espoused love, compassion and tenderness. To enter the portal would require that he leave it all behind and become a "creature" like her. She sliced open her wrist and asked him to drink from of the dripping entrails; the blood, she claimed, had the power to protect him once he reached the other side. Knowing that he had no choice, he ingested her blood and keeled over in pain. As he struggled, she informed that the powerful poison would soon kill him; he would have to remain alive by continuing to drink until all of his blood was replaced with hers. She had lived many lifetimes and killed many victims, and all of her power would now be his. She begged him to free her from a miserable existence, and he obliged, biting into her neck and draining every last drop; she was thus obliterated, her blood living on through the newly cursed Gabriel.

 
 
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