Four of the sons of Kain looked down upon the fifth
Four of the sons of Kain looked down upon the fifth. They had done as much as they could for him and that was about all that anyone could say. When you are trying to heal someone it is very hard to know what to do when what needs healing is everything. They just had to hope that the burns were not much more than skin deep. The second best doctor in all the lands had been called for and great expense had been spent transporting him from Meridian City to the Abby by magic. Unfortunately the best doctor in all the lands was probably Rahab and as Rahab was the one lying an inch from death and it was taking all of Turels power of will not to come out with the distasteful comment of 'physician heal thy self'.
The doctor had tried to shoo the four of them out of the room and had just about managed to get them to stand back a bit further from the sickbed that was threatening at any moment to become a deathbed. Melchia, Dumah, Turel and Raziel all watched the prone figure on the bed with expressions ranging from devastation to carefully blank.
We should all be here, Turel thought. Both Kain and Zephon and maybe even Lady Umah. They were in a strange way, if not a family, then at least friends. But Zephon had vanished with no trace years ago, Lord Kain was hibernating and Lady Umah was standing guard over his cocoon and had sworn never to leave until her husband woke up. But still, for the passing away of one of them they should all have been present.
The doctor rummaged around in his bag for a glass jar that looked to be containing a violently green substance. Breaking the wax seal an unscrewing the jar the room was almost instantly filled with an almost overpoweringly chemical smell. Taking a liberal handful of the stuff he began to gingerly spread it over the burnt areas of Rahabs broken body, which was all of it. The curious and slightly distressing smell of the ointment mercifully managing to bury the extremely distressing smell of burnt and scorched flesh. After a few minuets a servant came quietly entered the room with a big pile of cushions. The four brothers carefully griped a corner of the bed sheet and, with extreme care, lifted Rahab so that he was suspended above the bed. The doctor placed the cushions so that as the patient was lowered he gently assumed a more upright position.
'Will he…?' Dumah left the question hanging. To his brothers amazement there were acutely tears forming in his eyes.
'Survive? Possibly. At this point its hard to say.' Answered the doctor looking up into Dumahs brutal features. 'I am given to understand that you believe prayer to be useless and that the gods neither listen nor care but I feel in this case it could not hurt. I assume you have some idea of who did this?' Only a slight inflection at the end of the sentence indicated the question and he was slightly taken aback by the expressions of incomprehension the question was met with.
'We assumed that it was an unfortunate accident. That he had fallen asleep, the sun had come up and he had been caught on his balcony. He was well known for doing that. This would just be the first time he ever locked a door behind himself.' Said Raziel. The other clan leaders nodded. Rahabs annoying habits of leaving doors open was well known to them.
'Lord Raziel, in my youth I worked at the morgue in the slums of meridian. I can recognize any injury to a body both mundane and exotic and I can spot a number of very troubling ones on this body here.' Here he stopped to note the expressions of the four worried brothers. 'The eye and ears were not, as I first thought, burnt off but have in fact been removed by some sort of blade. You will note the delicate slash marks above the eyebrows and below the eye sockets. If I was to hazard a guess, I would say an almost scalpel like implement. You will note also the removal of the fangs and tong. There is also strong evidence of a blunt object hitting him very hard on the back of the head.' A troubled expression seemed to pass the old mans face again. 'I have no idea what did the burns, if he was a fledgling I would say prolonged exposure to sunlight but he is most definitely not a fledgling. Some sort of burning oil weapon or sorcery, maybe?'
There was a collective shuffling of feet and exchanging of eye contact before Raziel, being the oldest, was nominated to speak.
'Brother Rahab cannot abide the sun. It burns him like it would a fledgling. But I implore you not to tell anyone of this weakness, healer.' It had always been a closely guarded secret amongst the Rahabium and the species as a whole. Vampires of lesser historical importance could always lie about their age and claim to be younger than they were, but not so poor brother Rahab. Rahab who had cured all vampires everywhere of their fear of water could never be cured of the sun. Rahab the Benevolent, Rahab the nearly Pacifist, Rahab the Recluse. He was not loved by everyone but as far as the brothers knew he was hated by no one. He went though life in a cloud of mild, half-remembered amiability. You could not hate such a creature. No one cared enough to hate him, although the evidence in front of them said otherwise.
Reluctantly he awoke. It was not a pleasurable or quick process. First the dull, sharp, primitive parts of the brain did their tally of the body: Two arms, two legs, correct number of digits, bit of metal still stuck in left ear and the mouth tastes of recycled yesterdays. Then the more sophisticated bits of brain began to flicker on: Muscles feel cramped from sitting here two long, stomach feels empty, nose feels itchy, toes feel cold and eyes feel gummy. And finely the bit of the brain he used for being himself arose form dormancy: Still wedged behind the throne, the cocoon is beginning to fall apart, feel a bit dizzy and I'm still called Kain.
There was a small cracking, like that of eggshells as he stood up and the outer crust of the protective shell broke away. He blinked in the dazzling light of the moon as it shone though the glass dome of his throne room. Here came that dizziness again.
Sticking a hand out to steady himself on the arm of the throne he haw what state his hands were in. Firstly they were no longer yellow and secondly there were five clawed fingers. Bringing his albino white hand up to his face he felt that the bony crests had gone. A mirror. That's what he needed right now. Something to stop his new form from throwing any new surprises at him.
He took one step in his search for something reflective and the dizziness returned in crashing wave that ended with the Lord of all Nosgoth sprawled at the foot of his own throne in a growing pool of curse words and foul language.
Someone else had been in the throne room sleeping. He had not realised it until the noise of their steady breathing had stopped. Who ever it was, they were holding their breath pretty well.
'Kain, is that you?' turning his head he could make out the beautiful silhouette of his wife and queen. Turning his head his amber eyes met lavender eyes and he knew he was safe.
'How bad do I look?' he asked through gritted teeth. He had been terrified to change this time. So terrified. Every time he had ever changed in the past he had been moving further and further away from humanity and becoming a grotesque monster. He dreaded her answer.
'Like the day we first met. Do you remember?'
Kain did remember. An eternity ago she had watched over him as he slept, not entirely different to what she had just been doing now. She had be a healing angel to him and he had been death its self to her. That was how he had first met her, but she had first met him this time before he had met the Sarrafan Lord in open combat upon the plains before Meridian. In the non-existant timeline Kain had been defeated and an even darker age had spread across the land. And dear sweet Umah had given him a second chance. In this timeline Kain had ripped the Sarrafan Lords head clean off, taken the Nexus Stone as a trophy and used the severed head to club to death Faustus, Marcus and Sabastian. In this timeline he had first met Umah just before she and her sire had moved out of the old estate deep in the Dark Forest. She had been turned scarcely a month, and she was just as lovely as Kain remembered her to be an eternity and innumerable mistakes ago.
'Come on now.' She said placing a slender arm under his elbow and helping him of the ground. 'You will feel much better after a warm bath and some fresh clothes.'
Nice warm bath. Now there were some nice words. Gods bless Rahab. Tomorrow he would have to go and say thank you to his ascetic fledgling.
