Kain was deified.
Sitting upon the tarnished throne of his age old defiance, he bathed in the shadow of the pillars which he had smote ages ago. The very foundation of Nosgoth had been fractured, and he reveled in the remnants of their desecration. His nostrils flared, sucking in the wisps of dust weaving throughout the failing columns, rising in ignominy towards nine snapped shafts. The clans tell tales of him… few know the truth. Yet his tainted face, woven with deep scars and age-old creases, implied a wretched affair. He was mortal once, as were we all, however his contempt for humanity drove him to create me and my brethren.
Light peeled the shadow from my pallid skin as I stepped through the maw of his chamber. There was no warmth to it. Despite the balmy rays of the failing sun licking my cheeks, they remained cold as stone. Death's touch had long since smeared my once proud entity. But I did not need the affection of the sun to feel the conviction in the glares of my kin, or the ire of my maker as his drawn-back eyelids shot open.
I am Raziel – First born of his lieutenants. I stood with Kain, and my brethren, at the dawn of the empire. I am his most loyal vassal, yet now I walk toward his throne, stifled by fear of uncertainty. His glower sucked the breath from my lungs, as if in my twisted state I even required air. I stepped onto a raised platform, covered in strange configurations of hieroglyphics that were inscribed into facets of a bronze circle wrapping around the circumference. Lines of the same material cropped outwards at seemingly random intervals, as if they were the frozen spindles of some colossal wheel.
Stopping at the golden dais in the center, I wiped the loose strands of hair off my forehead anxiously scanning the chamber. Shadows of rats scurried about the dark arcade at the outer edge of the round space. Crimson sunlight spilt through the gashed ceiling, and in the dawning twilight a peculiar sense of vertigo overcame me. Everything seemed to be crushing down on me as if I stood in the heart of a vacuum, the very pillars themselves bracing to smother me. Shaking my head I noticed my five brothers, my own vivid reflections set to engulf me. How quickly their allegiance turned. I looked to the spot at the left hand of Kain with dread. That space, opposite the Reaver, which was left vacant – mine.
I have served him for a millennium. Together, in the name of vampires and a poignant disgust for all other things, we left the masses of Nosgoth on their knees. And the more lives we took; the more blood we indulged in; the more I began to notice it - Over time we had become less human. We became something more… Something divine.
Kain would enter the state of change and emerge with a new gift. I was not ignorant to the power buried within his discolored frame; unbelievable strength; the ability to distort the very fabric of the physical realm. Some years after the master, our evolution would follow. Always we trailed him in the pursuit of perfection. That was until I had the honor of surpassing my lord, and for that I was summoned to his throne to receive my reprisal.
I fell to one knee, my crimson cape dripping over both sides of my right arm, cascading along the curves of my leg. My shoulder blades twitched - with mortification I let my newfound gift unfurl. Long wings opened, sheets of thin, white leather stretched out across sharp spikes of bone. My head hung in shame as they extended fully, while through the dangling tufts of my hair I could see the rage written on Kain's usually stoic face.
Using the Soul Reaver as a crutch he rose from the confines of his grandiose seat - a throne of gnarled, stone thorns sprouting from the base of the central pillar - and approached me. My eyes froze as the blade dithered back and forth, humming as it leaned against the seat, whispering to me with words I could not comprehend. The glossy blade of the long, undulating claymore has reaped the lives from thousands, and its utter lack of deformities sent a chill up my spine. It was profoundly sublime in its depravity.
I broke my gaze as I heard the sound of his deformed feet dragging across the corroded stone. The tiny hairs running up the back of my neck stood erect as my head fell to a submissive bow. I could feel the breath of my brethren on my back, but I dared not look to them. It mattered not what emotion dwelled in their facades - pity, resentment - what could they possibly do?
Kain's rough claws ran along the outer barb of my still delicate wing. Like a child I had been to him, but my lord was a complicated beast. I could not fathom why my furthered excellence drew his ire, but there was no way to alter evolution's course for me. It was the wheel of fate that had made such a pivotal rotation, not me.
Regardless of my understanding, failure was inexcusable. I felt his claws wrap tightly around the rim of both wings. My eyes squeezed shut in anticipation. For my transgression I earned a new kind of reward… agony. My roar shook the very pillars as his arms exploded downward, tearing the bones framing my newest limbs out of my back. Blood spattered from the gashes as the regal endowments of nature were reduced to rags.
My vision turned to blackness.
My eyes flickered open to a landscape I knew all too well. The sky was cast in rust; the world drowning in twilight. A layer of ash lingered in the air, like a foul smog obscuring the lofty peaks of the sharp mountains surrounding my position. My feet smacked into the rickety planks of a swaying bridge as two of my brethren hauled me across it. Air screeched through the cracks in the wood, like sensuous, ethereal hands beckoning me to a destiny I could not escape.
Now rejuvenating, my awareness returned. The boisterous bellow of rushing water only now began to assault my ears as my knees scraped along the loose dirt of a small plateau, which cropped up from the abyss like a tooth. There was only one possible outcome, my eternal damnation.
I watched Kain step to the edge of the precipice, glaring down into the heart of the abyss, a series of grand waterfalls surrounding it. Water tumbled over jagged rocks towards a perpetually churning core of the most pristine blue I could ever imagine – the bane of all vampires. I, Raziel, was to suffer the fate of traitors and weaklings and burn forever in the bowels of the lake of the dead; to timelessly endure the wrath of the torrent until nihility released me.
My brothers halted, their capes billowing in the gust of wind howling past me. I tried to fight their strong grasps, but only further exhausted myself. My back throbbed, and my vision was cloudy, but as Kain moved past me I noticed something that perplexed me more than my exile ever could. Deep within his piercing, yellow eyes, there was the slightest hint of lament as he looked upon his foremost creation. What paradox was this? For what blasphemies was I damned to suffer that my cold and heartless leader could find compunction? But that spark vanished in an instant. His decision secure; my fate sealed.
"Cast him in," Kain growled, his voice lingering on the tainted air with the verve of a divinity. I tried to shout in defiance, but the words didn't slip out. My brethren, the very kin with whom I had served centuries, lifted my broken frame and heaved me forth. Screaming and flailing with all my might I tried to fly, but the tatters of my wings only fluttered in the wind. I plummeted, unable to look back as air gushed over me and crashing water deafened me. I grasped for the blood stained sun, its light bursting in my vision, and then the roiling chasm engulfed me. Tumbling, burning with white hot fire, I plunged into the depths of the abyss. Unspeakable pain - my body torn asunder; my flesh ripped from my muscle like a sheet of worn parchment. Relentless agony - water seeping like magma through ever orifice of my scorched body. Time ceased to exist. There was only this torture, and a deepening hatred for the hypocrisy which damned me to this hell!
Darkness took me.
An eternity passed.
And then my torment receded, bringing me back from the precipice of madness. Drifting downward through the suddenly tranquil waters, I recognized the sensation of my shattered body scraping against something like the muck of the earth. My cape lapped the scarred tissue of my back, interweaving with the ragged remnants of my wings. My claws dug into the grime, a simple sensation that I had completely forgotten. There was something besides agony now.
Now… Now I remember.
My legs strained as I wobbled to my feet. My eyes smoldering blue, like beams of light shot through two flawless sapphires. They were brimming with rage, a ravenous desire for vengeance creeping over me. Looking through a film of blurry liquid, I tried to see how I had been desecrated, but my murky new environment was suffocating.
Looking up toward the repressive sheets of augmenting darkness, I recalled the imposing grimace of my creator and clenched what remained of my clawed fist. Beneath it the foundations of his deplorable empire would crumble. The descent had destroyed me, and yet, I lived…