Inside the Enemy

As the bricked fundament around my hovering body began to alternate with thick masses of grey withered webbing spreading on all sides I realized that my goal was almost within reach. I had already noticed earlier that with each upper tier the signs of the Zephonim's occupation were getting more and more flagrant, so it was not surprising that the topmost floor my brother resided at was the most infested of all. The thread covered everything in this area entirely imperturbably and at one time or another one could easily forget this was another part of the human-made building and not some natural underground spider's cave. This place was a pure embodiment of dark lurking menace, and the closer I was getting to its heart the more I felt its thrilling atmosphere penetrate into my every body cell.

When the vertical tunnel I was levitating through at last found its end I quit hold of my wings and caught at the nearest ledge, sinking with my talons into the greasy coat of rotten web it was enmeshed in.

After having mounted it I sat on its verge with my legs hanging low and took several minutes to gather my breath and summon my racing thoughts. The dilapidated bedding of the web the Zephonim had weaved here perhaps eons ago had long since lost its viscidity and turned out to be very comfortable to sit on, feeling like a soft dry haystack. From beneath the strong whiffs of airflow that had carried me here were gently licking at my clawed feet, also contributing to the unusual state of comfort I had so unexpectedly achieved through this moment of idleness.

For minutes I sat motionless and stared through the invisible updraft rising before me into nowhere, trying to calm the restless thoughts dashing through my head... the thoughts of my brother Zephon and my coming meeting with him after all the centuries that I spent burning in the waters of the Lake of the Dead and he spent living on this desecrated perishing land together with his clan, devolving into whatever the corruption had turned him into. My execution at the hands of Kain was not his fault, but like my other brethren Zephon attempted nothing at all to prevent it from happening. Like others he turned on me without a flicker of hesitation at the mere order of his Master as if a millennium of brotherhood lived together before the day of my punishment was meaningless to him. And when I was finally brought face to face with my own downfall and for the last time looked him in the eyes before being thrown into the abyss, I didn't see an ounce of affliction, grief or at least compassion of the former brotherly love in them – I saw the same cold-hearted indifference that was written on the faces of all my other siblings when they senselessly watched their own flesh and blood being humiliated and scourged for a crime he did not commit. After killing Melchiah and getting the first nauseating taste of fratricide I thought I would be able to cope with my boiling wrath and settle the dispute with the rest of my brothers without mercilessly taking their lives. But the closer I was getting to my encounter with Zephon, the more intense the memory of his treachery was returning to me, the stronger the long-awaited desire for revenge kept growing and the more unavoidable was becoming one comprehension – he, like all my other brethren, was beyond any forgiveness…

Before this vortex of painful reminisces and hating emotions had completely consumed me I caught myself realizing that time was too priceless now to be spent on empty contemplations, so I banished all the thoughts from my head and stood erect, turning to the side of the passage that lay behind me. I didn't cherish great hopes that the captured members of Bolgor's squadron that I was looking to rescue were still alive but as long as this was not set in stone I had to do everything in my hands to find them before it was too late.

So I strode into the depth of the tier, my feet poaching into the thick layer of web covering the floor with my every step. Just like in the lower tiers this level was another maze of entangled corridors and even though this area of the edifice was little but inaccessible to any intruders that could not scale vertical surfaces like the Zephonim it appeared that my brother had still decided to cautiously hunker in the very innermost of it.

Which would have been entirely in character for him.

Zephon, as I remembered him from the years of my vampire life, was neither a good warrior, nor a smart strategist, but there was one trait of his nature that he excelled in more than any of us did, and that was his cunningness. Suspicious and reticent, he never spoke much, but always sponged every word whispered around him, attempting to use all kinds of acquired information for his own benefit. He never trusted anyone, not even his own family, and constantly tried to protect himself from some nonexistent threats, creating unnecessary sophisticated schemes and spinning different intrigues around himself… so much like that web he and his offspring were wrapping their cloister in. It was almost ironic how the deeds of the past now seemed to have an influence on the consequences of the present, materializing in the direction of the degrading effect the corruption of the Pillars had on the clans.

Slowly the roaming walk through the twisting routes of this tier was starting to become a problem as there was no more outside assistance from Ariel or directions of the vampire hunters to guide me across the unfamiliar surroundings. I tried to make use of the recently emerged feeling of my brother's close presence, attempting to follow its visceral fluids like a compass needle, but unfortunately it did not work in a manner of this sort. The blood bond between the vampires could only alert a creature of the night whether a relative of his was alive or dead or close by in the terms of space, but to detect vampire's precise whereabouts one had to rely on other senses like smell or hearing. But Zephon was lurking too deep and too well for such reference points to be available to me, so gradually my blind searches were bringing me to an impasse.

When the confusion of helplessness already started entrammeling me all over a subliminal voice suddenly rang out of nowhere, lashing against my mind with its vehemence like a tidal wave breaking against the shore,

=Raziel!=

As unanticipated as was this abrupt rush of telepathic contact this time I took it with full calamity, for the retention of the previous time when I had experienced it was still very fresh in my memory. But what caused my abashment nonetheless was not the suddenness of the whispering echo, but rather its unexpectedness, since calling to me now with it was no other than the spirit of the former Balance Guardian, Ariel, who for now was one of those I was expecting least to hear. Last time we communicated with each other she was guiding me through this pandemonium, but after I had neglected one of her instructions the incarcerated female specter had gone silent as if having boycotted me. And now that I had already given up on her aid Ariel's spirit suddenly became interjoined with mine once again, which made me question whether my previous estimation of the whole situation was correct.

"Ariel?" I asked in surprise. "But I thought you…"

=…Abandoned you?= she finished the phrase for me. =I know. I was able to read your thoughts for some more time after the mental connection between us was lost.=

Though her tone was perfectly neutral I could still sense the stifled rebuke and perhaps even dudgeon in every word she whispered.

=The reason I have not spoken to you through all this time is because the state of the Pillars is worsening, and so do my powers…= she proceeded. =The energy remaining at my disposal doesn't let me maintain the mind contact for too long or establish it whenever I want, so it sometimes may come to a cease beyond my will. And last time it happened coincided with the moment you didn't follow my direction…= She paused a little after this oration then added with an untypical note of joviality in her voice, =…Which, honestly, I didn't really mind at all.=

After Ariel had revealed these insights to me I had to stand silently for several more seconds as if riveted to the spot, trying to digest all the new information. Though she seemed to be excusing herself for her long silence with this explanation I very soon realized I was the one who had to be making excuses for having so wrongly and hastily discredited her loyalty to me as shame began to burn in the back of my head, making me feel like a guilty child that got told off by the parents.

"I… I'm sorry, Ariel… I should have never doubted you…" I said bashfully.

=Let us delay all these sentiments, Raziel,= she responded as always calmly. =For there is still much work to be done. I have to lead you to your brother's lair before we're short of time again. You are nearly there already, so prepare yourself.=

Ariel was all business now, which was more than reasonable considering how things were going, so I abstained from any superfluous words and simply funneled all my concentration into the sense of her subliminal presence within my mind, ready and eager to follow her every guideline. If she was truly able to read my thoughts as she had claimed to then I hoped she could now feel the veritable depth of my shame and regret for having misjudged her even without my telling her straight about it. But more important than this I hoped that she could also sense another very odd and at the same time pleasant feeling I was experiencing now probably for the first time in my entire existence - a feeling of happiness from finding out that I was actually wrong… wrong in my judgment of someone I really needed right now to be by my side as my partner and supporter and guide me through this long and lonely quest…

One corridor was passing into another, then into another and then into another as I kept crossing them thick and fast with Ariel's voice again guiding me like a lighthouse shining through the darkness of the night for a sea-quartering ship. From afar I could hear how the whole space of the cathedral was beginning to fill with droning sound of the organs as the airflow I had used formerly to gain altitude and ascend this level was passing through their lines. The humming noise felt rather subtle and clearly lacked the loudness and frequency that could be harmful to delicate vampiric hearing, so I strongly doubted whether Moldgar's prediction about the pipes still having the capacity to purify the edifice from the Zephonim's occupation was correct. However, while running through the passages I could not help noticing that the intensity of the hum produced by the organs was slowly, but steadily growing, which made me wonder how much longer it could continue to increase that way.

Over time the walls and the ceiling of the tunnels I was straying through began to have dozens of webbing hasps hanging attached to their thread-cloaked surface. Unlike the hasps I had discovered on the third tier these ones had their tissue so tightly tauten around the figures of the beings enwrapped in them that even without carefully looking I could still descry that swathed inside them were pupating Zephonim, the contours of their hideous tusked snouts and angular bodies prominently showing through the pulsing skin of the cocoons.

So this was another nest the Zephonim had laid inside this building and in view of the fact that the vampire larvae needed to be fed with blood periodically whatever preys the children of my brother could hold captive here had to be kept somewhere close by.

=Raziel!= Ariel's voice suddenly brought me out of my calculations, resonating within the confines of my mind.

"Yes?" I asked alarmed.

=There's something going wrong around.= she answered in a worried tone.

"What is it?" I asked her again, at once skidding to a stop and starting to look about me.

=I don't know,= the female specter replied. =But it feels inimical.=

I pivoted on my heels back and forth in look for any signs of something hazardous, but failed to see or sense anything. The air was quiet and still except for the honking noise of the cathedral's pipes continuing to gradually spread farther and farther throughout the space of the tier, while the cocooned ghouls around me could constitute no threat as long as they remained in their deep sleep of evolution.

For an instant I was about to think that Ariel was mistaken in her anticipation but then all of a flutter a chapping squelching sound came from the rear, at once assuaging these doubts of mine.

Alerted, I turned around and beheld one of the cocoons beginning to crack and split with a lot of thick disgusting green slime oozing from the fissures in its tissue. In less than no time it burst completely and the pupating Zephonim vampire that used to be enlaced in it started to hatch out of the cocoon like a nestling squeaker breaking its eggshell, roaring loudly and splashing multiple drippings of mucus from its dystrophic husk.

At the sight of this I instantly unclenched my talons, intending to end it quickly before the beast's untimely emergence could cause me any troubles, but in the following moment other cocoons around me began to burst in the same manner with more arachnids continuing to hatch out of them one after another.

In a matter of seconds I was already surrounded by no less than several dozens of newly fledged ghouls vigorously abandoning their pupal chambers and disentangling themselves from the gluttonous bile-like substance that used to sustain them inside the webbing shells during their hibernation period.

At first I was ready to believe that it was simply bad luck that these wretches had to start hatching the very moment I was coming near but then as the spreading background buzz of the sounding organs continued to make me even more nettled than I already was I momentarily comprehended what was the true reason for this seeming coincidence.

It was the growing honk from the pipes that was now waking the Zephonim out of their sleep of evolution.

Although the sound was too obtuse to be of any actual harm to the vampires, given their general susceptibility to its power it must have still been disturbing enough for their hearing to have awoken them. Apparently the pupating vampires remained extremely sensitive to sound even inside the cocoons, which explained how the ringing of the cathedral's bell on the lower tier managed to annihilate an entire pupating nest of theirs.

Though it took the roused Zephonim some time to recover after perhaps centuries of dormancy those of them that had completely freed themselves from the webbing and slime by now seemed to be gradually starting to react to my presence. With every elapsing second the number of the unbound beasts kept growing and though these spawns had to be seriously weakened after passing the long period of change, rushing into a fight against so many of them at a time would still not be very reasonable. Besides, there was no Soul Reaver to back me up at the moment and my energy had already waned a little after the time I had lately spent straying through this tier without the blade to sustain me.

All the signs showed that the combat was not preferable and as several new-born leeches lastly began to slowly advance on me I realized I had to do a not very valiant, but necessary thing, and that was to retreat. But instead of trying to run away through their crowd or sneak off them in some other way I simply waved my hands in a mystic gesture, willing myself to shift to the spectral realm.

The environment distorted with a loud moan-like sound as the manifold scanty figures around me started disappearing in the bluish darkness of the dead world. I always hated the idea of receding from any combat, no matter how difficult or dangerous it could seem, but for now I knew I had to value the time and not waste it on some useless peddling brawls that could be easily avoided if wanted.

=That was wise.= Ariel whispered to me.

"I know." I replied dryly. "Now I suggest we continue our way."

With these words I turned my face toward where her voice had been leading me before this moment and once again broke into a run.

After retreating to the spectral realm there was nothing to bar my path anymore and so my progress had accelerated both spatially and temporarily. Even my feet stopped sinking into the web-covered ground all the time, for in this dimension that sticky substance that coated the fundament had turned into a flat steadfast shadow of itself.

Nevertheless, I still had to stray through a good dozen wiggling annexes before the subliminal echo of Ariel had finally brought me to what she indicated to be my endpoint.

The location I had been searching for all along turned out to be a broad circular entrance leading into an obscure chamber that was going so deep into wherever it was immersing that I could not even approximately descry from outside of it what lay at its distant end, let alone in the nebulous atmosphere of the world of the dead. The closer part of the chamber was more illuminated than its depth, but with the misty brume of the eidolon reality relentlessly distorting my sight none of the surroundings could be discerned in detail, so I decided not to even bother myself trying to scrutinize anything here until I was in the material realm again.

Making no delay, I walked into the chamber and at once spotted a planar portal flaring brightly in the near corner to the right of me. The long time I had spent wandering through this tier had already restored all my consumed soul energy and now I was ready to transfer myself to the real world.

But before I could even step upon the burning ring of the conduit a gelid screech broke from somewhere above me, sending a chilling wave of tremor through my skin.

Startled, I looked up and saw the most dangerous entity of the non-corporeal realm flying over my head with a loud rustle of its tattered robe-like attire – the vampire wraith. The last time I faced one of these creatures in a combat was when I infiltrated the Melchiahim clan territory and back then the spectral predator that I crossed paths with managed to cause me some tangible difficulties with its nasty soul-sucking ability. But now I had the wraith blade to strengthen my position against my new opponent, so I quickly raised it ready to use, showing the feral phantom my complete willingness to accept its challenge.

The dark-robed wraith wheeled around my frame several more times and then hung in mid-air in front of me for a moment, yawping at me with its beady red eyes blazing from its hood. Then it violently dove at me with its claws shot forth, but I adroitly jumped back and nicked the barbarized vampire spirit with the sword across its semisolid body.

The flying phantom backed off with a yelp and flanked to the left of me, starting to hesitatingly hover now to one side and now to the other as if thinking over a new tactic of assaulting me.

After a little protraction it attempted for another dive from an unusual angle, which I was still able to counter again.

The same repeated two more times until the Reaver lastly burned out the wraith's defense and left it a moaning transparent spirit that at once got absorbed by the blade's green flame. As always, my symbiotic weapon fraternally shared its prey with me as I felt my soul-hunger becoming a little bit less poignant after the sword's feeding.

The skirmish with the predator of the Underworld appeared to be so much easier than I expected that it even left me with an unusual feeling of dissatisfaction from a challenge so weak. But once I remembered that there was still a confrontation with my brother awaiting me ahead I understood that the opportunity to quench my appetite for a good fight would most likely present itself later.

As I finally stood upon the portal to the material dimension Ariel again called to me with her sweet cushioned voice,

=Be careful once you meet with your brother, Raziel. Through all the eons that passed after your execution he has become much more dangerous than he ever was before.=

"I would have been more surprised if you'd told me he hasn't." I returned a bit playfully, bearing in mind the experience I had had with his arthropod-like posterity. Then I changed to a serious vein again, "Don't worry about me, Ariel. As long as I'm able to return to the spirit world Zephon can do me no harm…"

=Unless only he too has learned to invade the pit of this realm.= the female specter remarked.

This thought had not even crossed my mind before and as Ariel pointed it out I realized I had completely overlooked such probability. Considering that even Melchiah somehow learned to travel between two dimensions while being the most underdeveloped of our brood I could now very well expect the same from Zephon too. Of course, Melchiah's unsuspected ability could simply be explained by his deformed rotting carcass teetering on the brink of two worlds like a walking corpse, but it was still an admonishment that my second sibling could also be laying some other 'surprises' in store for me, so I made a mental note not to be reckless when battling him on the material plane.

As I fixed this idea in my memory I once again addressed myself to Ariel,

"Regardless of what will be the outcome of my meeting with Zephon, I want to thank you for all your kind support, Ariel. Without your guidance I would have never made it this far."

=My guidance has only saved you some time that you could have spent on wandering through the routes you were not familiar with.= she replied. =But it was you alone who came up with the schemes that helped you overcome all your hardships even when I could not to be around. It is not your blade, but your own mind that is your most powerful weapon, Raziel. Remember this when you confront your brother.=

On this note Ariel's mental presence gently vanished from the vaults of my conscience like smoke fading through an opened window. I didn't know if she had run out of energy to maintain the telepathic connection or if she was simply done talking to me, but it no longer mattered. She had already done for me everything she possibly could for now and even more than that, and what still remained to be done was only for me to cope with.

With this comprehension I concentrated and shifted to the material realm, letting the grains of matter start gathering around my astral composition like a hundred thousand insects swarming over some incredibly odoriferous flower. In the same instant the surrounding atmosphere of the chamber I manifested inside began to retrieve its true self, encircling me with the kind of interior that my eye turned out to be totally unprepared for.

The room that emerged around me greeted me with a gaudy mixture of different shades of red color that changed from scarlet-red to dark-wined in different parts of the place. After having seen nothing but dark dull corridors with all their dingy bricked fundament and the grey rotten webbing of the Zephonim covering it here and there it felt very unusual to sight something that bright and colorful inside this drab edifice.

As my eyes became more of less accustomed to the new oriflamme environment I managed to make out that the source of this redness was some strange tuberous substance that imperturbably coated both the walls of the chamber and the floor under my feet. This succulent essence felt soft and elastic to stand upon and in combination with its color resembled some sort of muscular tissue.

The lateral walls of the chamber were covered in this substance as well; however, there were also a number of broad grey pillars showing through their red surface that looked to be carrying their flesh-like fundament. These pillars had an uneven shape, widening from the bottom up to the middle and then again tapering from the middle upwards, which made them look like two rows of colossal disjointed bones.

The repetitive associations of the room's décor elements with different anatomic notions were making me feel as if the conduit I had just entered in the spectral realm had somehow transferred me inside the body of some gigantic creature, and when I arrived at this ridiculous idea I couldn't help but snort aloud at the absurdity of my own deductions.

After a short moment of standstill I started striding into the depth of the room and with every next pace I made the gloomy space of the chamber's distant end was slowly beginning to become revealed to me.

When I got close enough for my vision to be able to penetrate through the cloak of darkness shielding this field I saw an enormous beige knob standing there, rising over my head for about ten feet if not more. The knob was pulpy and grumous, all covered in thick blue pulsing veins, while its skin was slowly shrinking in and out as if breathing. It also had a wide black hole adorning its front side that was looking directly onto me.

As I lifted my gaze a bit to get a broader view of the inconceivable structure I noticed a long finned stem growing from its top and rising high upwards. It looked like a thin trunk of a shriveled tree, which ramified into more stems that were spreading in different directions. All these twig-like sprouts were twining high toward the upper corners of the chamber and from the spot where I stood now there was no way to discern what these odd appendages really were.

I had no faintest idea what I was staring at now and whether this thing was even alive or not, but even more than that I could not understand what this whole place had to do with my brother and where he was at the moment if this was supposed to be the heart of his lair.

Suddenly the upper parts of this whole ramified structure began to creak loudly in a sound of an old wooden door being flung open and all its sprouts started trembling as if trying to limber up from stiffness after a long period of immobility.

I cautiously drew back from the abruptly stirring object as four of its manifold appendages began to bend forth tightly, inch by inch writhing out of the shades that used to clothe them.

As they finally hung out above me I realized what those things were.

Limbs. Humongous insect-like limbs, each one ending with crooked mandible claws that resembled colossal scythes. Just like the interior of the chamber they consisted of both the red-colored substance that seemed to serve as flesh of a sort and the osseous structure that formed the innate blades protruding from it. Now there could be no doubt left that this impossible phenomenon before me was a living creature, but what manner of one it exactly was still remained in prospect of being found out.

Before I could delve deeply into any speculations as to what kind of monstrosity I was dealing with here the stem on the top of the throbbing phleboid mass in front of me creakingly bent forward as well, exposing a huge bony conglomeration growing on its top and carrying all those limbs that were now smoothly beetling over me. The stem appeared to be something like a spinal column, while the bones it supported had to be the creature's thorax.

Like the arachnid ghouls I had encountered heretofore this thing had a scraggy, nearly fleshless ribcage, only of a greater size. It also had the same frill-like protrusion showing from out of its back like those I had seen on the adult Zephonim, only this time it seemed to be not a dermal, but a bony excrescence. The being's exoskeleton was growing outside its flesh and formed some kind of a natural carapace around it, while that red carneous substance its body was made of remained hidden behind the prominent bones, intensively pulsing under their shell like a heart's muscle.

And then the third creak was heard from high above as the insect-like beast bent its bony neck and bowed it over me, displaying its massive head, which happened to be probably the strangest and the most horrid part of its terrifying appearance. It was a large crested skull dividing into two vertical osseous extensions that looked like a doubled crown of huge crooked horns. Aside from this horrible feature the monster also had an extremely salient and pinched chin and a pair of yellow pupilless eyes with short dissonance between them. The only two things about the being's deformed face that mysteriously retained a humanoid form were its nose and lips, but together with its other dismaying habits they only added more sickening perversity to the creature's abominable exterior view.

For a second or two I stood dead and peered into the bloodcurdling frame of the monstrosity that literally towered over me with all its enormous mass. It was like no other being I had ever seen - a gigantic mutated spider or a mantis, perhaps. There was a mixture of emotions I was experiencing from watching it: terror, revulsion, puzzlement… And yet, there was one that was the most distinct and thus frightening among all of them – the feeling of familiarity.

This spectacle that reality had presented to me could surely seem foreign and confusing at first glance, but my inner instincts were telling me different. The more I kept looking at the hideous beast in front of me, the more I couldn't resist the burning visceral vibes of blood tie that felt as ever strong even after eons of separation. And though I would have loved to reject all the sensations of kinship coming from my very core and force myself into believing I was mistaken in my assumptions, gradually I could not help but perceive that this vile abhorrence I was beholding now was no other but my brother Zephon.

The very instant I came to this conclusion the crest on the monster's head abruptly pulled apart in two halves like a folding gate, while its bottom jaw dropped down low, revealing an immense mouth full of long sharp teeth. Then the spider-like giant sharply twitched with its whole bone-shelled carcass and brought forth its scraggy neck at me, its nightmare of a face stopping in the air just a few feet away from where I was standing.

Once the beast's beady yellow eyes were nearly level with mine it opened its exposed chaps wide and deliriously roared at me to what seemed to be the full capacity of its lungs. The sound of the growl was loud and squeaky, jarring on my eardrums like a thousand knives and touching my very spirit with utter consternation.

When the fiend was done roaring it retracted its neck, while all the extendible parts of its head-crest folded back into their former places, again hiding the sharp-toothed jaws. Clearly the purpose of this bizarre animalistic snarl was to intimidate me from the very beginning of our confrontation and unfortunately for me I couldn't say it failed to do so.

Tensed with alarm, I carefully backtracked from the titan for a couple of paces so as to be closer to the exit from the chamber in case there would be a real need to back off, but just as I even thought of such possibility the circular entrance behind me started shriveling and converging like skin shrinking from cold.

As soon as I detected that I quickly tried to run up to the tapering pass, but in less than a second it already closed completely, having become imperviously covered with the same red membrane that coated the walls and the floor of the room. In the same moment a high-pitched nasal voice rang out from abaft of me as the incogitable creature I attempted to escape from spoke to me for the very first time,

"The prodigal son..." it snuffled. "There is no returning for you, Raziel."

After that phrase all the doubts that could have possibly remained as to the identity of the beast had fallen down completely, and the terrible realization that I had been so reluctant to yield this entire time had finally become too blatant to continue being denied. This gargantuan insect-like deformity was my blood brother Zephon – the second-to-last vampire son and lieutenant of Kain and the leader of the Zephonim clan.

No matter how hard I had been trying to prepare myself for discovering how miserably the corruption had profaned another one of my former family, it still failed to deliver me from the usual feeling of shock that always came with the perception of what had happened to my siblings. Regardless of the fact that I deeply hated my brethren for their betrayal and wanted to avenge myself by destroying them all, I still couldn't help feeling pained to see the way evolution had treated our once noble dynasty. Just like Melchiah, Zephon had no ounce of his former vampire self left in him anymore – he was a monster now, a perverted parody of the person that I remembered him to be. The ages we spent apart from each other had mercy for neither of us, and now he appeared just as ruined as I was after my centuries-old torment. Like the rest of my brethren Zephon paid his own price for helping Kain establish his tyrannical Empire on the corrupted deceasing land of Nosgoth.

But was this price enough to correct his fault for his treachery?

When I inwardly asked myself this question the stream of painful memories had once again overwhelmed me. One by one the last agonizing images of the past started unremittingly gloating in my mind: Kain tearing out the bones from my wings… All my brethren standing around watching and doing absolutely nothing to stop it… The sight of the whirlpool at the bottom of the abyss… The eons of infinite torture in the scalding waters of the Lake of the Dead… Pain… Humiliation… Despair… Anger… Madness…

No.

That was not enough.

Zephon had not redeemed himself yet.

He deserved to die.

And then I realized that it was not the monster Zephon that I had to annihilate now. It was the vampire Zephon - the same one that I remembered from my previous life, now lurking somewhere deep inside this new devolved form; the very same cowardly hypocrite who turned his back on me centuries ago. His appearance could have changed over time, but his black traitorous soul remained within his frame, and I would devour it just like I devoured the soul of Melchiah.

As I grasped this understanding a new sensation of everything was suddenly born inside me and I slowly turned my gaze back to my wretched brother, but this time with my eyes regarding him from an entirely different angle.

"Zephon," I referred to him with unveiled contempt. "Your visage becomes you. It's an appropriate reflection of your soul..."

"...And you are not His handsome Raziel anymore." he talked back in his nasty scrannel voice like that of a wriggling court jester. "His precious first-born son, turned betrayer. You have missed so many changes, little Raziel. Look around you. See how the humans' weapon of destruction has become my home... Indeed, my body. A cocoon of brick and granite from which to watch a pupating world..."

Upon that phrase another loud creak boomed within the chamber's space, but this time it didn't come from where Zephon's bulk was placed, but instead sounded from somewhere high above.

I looked up at the room's ceiling and saw another two pairs of gigantic limbs slowly descending from there, all clicking and crackling unpleasantly. Similarly to the four limbs that grew out of Zephon's thorax these were also disturbingly lengthy, thin and jointed, with their bony structure growing outward and forming sharp scythe-like blades at their ends. Gradually they sank so low they became almost level with my head, surrounding me in a hazardous square. So this was what Zephon meant when se said that this place had become his body. Somehow he had literally grown into the very fundament of this building, and now the cathedral was him and he was the cathedral. At last it was clear why everything about this chamber's interior resembled different anatomical elements so much. These were all parts of my sibling's mutated body: the pillars carrying the lateral walls were his bones, while the red meaty substance covering the walls and the floor appeared to be his own flesh.

Then all of a flutter I sensed a dizzying mixture of disgust and scorn begin to boil within me that I was hardly able to stand it. For in one momentary rush of realization I understood that Zephon was actually proud of what he had turned into. The madness of Nupraptor the Mentalist that poisoned his mind and his body and reduced his own children to irrational mindless animals seemed to be an amusement to him, and that was obnoxious to say the least. Even Melchiah who managed to evolve far beyond his former weak self was so much embarrassed and repulsed by the abomination he had become that he even wished to die only to release himself from this defilement. But Zephon was speaking of his new loathsome form with pride and vanity as if it was something that was worth being glorified. Not only didn't he regret the way the corruption had desecrated his offspring and himself – he was enjoying such despicable existence. Evidently I was wrong in my earlier presumption that Zephon was already penalized for his crimes by inhabiting this odious carcass. His one and only payment was his ultimate obliteration and now I was dying to make it happen.

"A crevice in which to cower, only scuttling from the shadows to devour a victim already ensnared in your cowardly trap." I disdainfully objected to his previous tirade. "But you've made the mistake of leaving me unbound, and it is you who must succumb to my will."

"Will... instinct... reflex action... the insect mind finds little difference." Zephon retorted. "I warn you, brother - as my stature has grown, so it is matched by my appetite. Step forward, morsel..."