The stamp of heavy feet on the metal decking behind him made Janos turn, to find myself greeted by the heavy set form of Lorenzo. The man still wore the mask to protect himself from the heavy smog this far up in the air, but Janos could see the tips of his beard spread out around it.
"One of our advantages." The man said and he had to shout to be heard about the howl of the wind and the muffling effect of the mask. He reached out with his artificial hand and gave the wall of the narrow corridor they were in a rough but affectionate pat. "This vessel is the one of its kind."
Janos, still bewildered by the revelation and stunning reality of all this leaned back against the far bulkhead with a heavy thump. One hand went to his head and her shook himself, trying to regain some of his wits.
"Your people would be invincible with a fleet of such ships. No Vampire power could touch you." He said as if he were merely speaking out load. Lorenzo grunted in response and shrugged his wide shoulders.
"Don't think that hasn't occurred to us in our fondest wild dreams." He said ruefully. "But recourses were only had to build and maintain the one ship." Janos turned his head to look at him, his expression behind the glass eyepieces of the mask questioning. Lorenzo could not see his face but seemed to understand anyway.
The man crooked the finger of his good hand in a traditional 'follow me' gesture and led the way back up the thing corridor and then along the wider central one. They had to turn their bodies to the side now and then to allow others coming the other way to pass. Being amongst so many Humans and all but ignored now, as if accepted into their company had not yet stopped being a bizarre experience.
The bridge of this craft was somewhat more spacious, being about the size of a regular house room. However it was crammed with all sorts of complex sets of instruments and equipment, much of it set into the walls, ceiling and in some places even the floor. Janos recognised a series of compasses set into one wall. Directly above them were dials which had little annotations next to them in carved wooden plagues to reveal their meaning. Some were for air pressure, others were to monitor the gas in either the vessel's tanks or main balloon.
There was also a strange glass tube stretched across the width of the bridge, directly before the main windows. It was marked in places along its length and filled with liquid. A single bubble inside kept sliding back and forth as the ship bobbed and swayed. The man at the helm kept glancing at it and if the bubble strayed too far from the centre of the tube he would turn the metal ring in his hands the other way.
Turning his head Janos saw that beside the door he had entered directly across from the helm was a decorative plaque set into the wall. It was made of copper and set in relief into it was the visage of a Human woman. The features seemed dulled with the age of the art even if it was polished to a mirror shine, but he beheld a strong angular face with long straight dark hair and piercing judgemental eyes that followed him around the room. Underneath the letters 'L-I-E-S-E' were engraved.
"This ship is old." Janos remarked, staring at the picture. Lorenzo followed his gaze and nodded in solemn agreement.
"Centuries old. It was made by my ancestor." He said, gesturing to the visage of the woman with his voice filled with an odd respect. "We make sure to take good care of it." He kept his eyes on the image as he paused, contemplating. Personally Janos saw no similarity between the Forsaken leader's features and that of the woman displayed.
"It was she who led the assault and destroyed the Dumahim, all those centuries ago, you know." Lorenzo surprised him by adding, his voice rippling with sadistic mirth. Janos shot him a curious look. "Dumah was an arrogant bastard according to our historians. He sought dominion over all Vampires and was prepared to destroy even his own brothers in an attempt to seize control of their clans." The Forsaken leader raised one finger and wagged it back and forth. "But it was an alliance between my ancestor, Liese and the rag tag remains of the once great Razielim clan which proved his downfall. They opened the gates of his city to her and she lead an army right into the depths of his supposedly impregnable capital city. The battle for his city cost us a great deal of blood but in the end we burned his city out, slaughtered most his clan and left the brute himself impaled on his own throne."
As Janos absorbed that information he frowned behind the mask he wore at that last part.
"And yet his carcass was in the furnace?" He asked. Lorenzo nodded again.
"Odd isn't it?" He agreed. "It's almost as if someone revived him, only to lure him into his own fires and turn him to char." The way the man spoke it was clear he already knew the answer to the enigma. Janos did was well. It was obvious.
"Raziel." He proclaimed in a now intense voice. Lorenzo relaxed his shoulders beneath his thick jacket.
"I would imagine so." He agreed. "Reports I had told of a blue skinned wraith like demon going from Clan to Clan, dispatching each of their leaders. He did more good for Humanity in a few days then the Forsaken have for over five centuries. We knew Raziel as a name from history, a lost clan leader executed for treason. Yet now that name returns in the form of a ghoulish avenger." The man reached up and removed his mask so that his eyes peeked out from over the top of it. His gaze was intense and in that moment they seemed very much like those eyes in the metal engraving beside them. "I want to know more about him. Where he came from, what his purpose is and where he is now."
Again the question of exactly how much was wise to tell a Human of what had transpired rose in Janos' mind. Then again, what truly could he say? Raziel was a puzzle even to himself, with a labyrinthine destiny and nature that defied logical explanation. Once Janos had been confident and secure in his certain knowledge of the role Raziel had been intended to play. But that comforting assuredness had been broken quite some time ago.
"Raziel is a being that might be beyond your ability to comprehend." He simply said. Lorenzo replaced his mask back on his face as the air was still quite thick with soot.
"You might be surprised what I can comprehend." The man replied flatly, clearly not willing to let the subject drop. Janos paused again, hesitating in uncertainty. He glanced once at the picture of the woman on the wall, then back at the man before him.
"Raziel is..." He began in a slow voice.
"Coordinator!" A startled cry came from the helmsman, cutting him off. Lorenzo turned sharply away from him. "Something is coming!" The man pointed forward out the window directly before them.
Following the man's gaze they could see that there was something out there, a dark shape in the clouds of smog which surrounded them. Whatever it was clearly had wings which were beating to keep it aloft. For the moment it seemed be flying level with them. Lorenzo came to stand by the helmsmen, taking the chance of removing his mask again so he could see it more clearly then from behind the tinted eyepieces.
"More flying Vampires?" He asked, glancing back at Janos for a moment before gazing out at the job. Behind his own mask, Janos frowned in perplexity. The thing out there flew like no Vampire he had seen. The arrangement between the wings and the body were all wrong. For a moment he thought it might be that winged Hylden he had seen but the shape did not seem right for that either. The clouds obscured most of it from view but whatever it was, it seemed to be coming closer now.
"That's no Vampire..." He began but then without warning and one flap of its wings the shape came darting at them, displaying an astonishing speed. It shot at them like an arrow and as it loomed over them its true size became disturbingly and frighteningly apparent. The wings spread wide, the thing was as large if not bigger then this entire vessel. The mere passage of it shook the air and rattled every bolt and plate of metal on-board.
The ship lurched violently to one side, dragging so violently off its centre of balance that the decking tilted sharply to a declining angle. Several of the Forsaken crew tumbled off their feet up against the wall, small objects not attached to anything firmly fixed falling with them. Janos managed to catch hold of the door frame to stop himself from falling. The helmsman frantically drove the wheel back the other way, fighting to right their ship.
"By the abyss, what was that!?" Lorenzo shouted, holding onto the floor with the enhanced grip of his artificial hand. His grasp was shaken when a howling wind came bellowing in the wake of the thing which had brushed past them, causing the Endurance to lurch so violently to one side that it lost altitude and began sinking quickly. The decking dropped away beneath Janos' feet and he collapsed to the floor, grasping tight to the doorframe.
Then the shadow passed over them again, a swift darting presence of sheer mass which came hurtling past the other way. Its passage, followed once more by the strong wind sent the vessel hurtling violently after it. Janos found himself slammed hard into the wall. His vision swam as he hit his head, a chaos of tumbling objects and bodies about him weirdly muted and distant for a moment.
"Take her down!" Lorenzo ordered the helmsmen sharply, struggling back up to his feet. "We can't see it inside all this smog!" The helmsman nodded back at him and yanked hard on a lever. From overhead there was the hiss of gas being pumped back out of the main balloon and began into some other, heavier storage compartment. As the vessel began to sink in a far more controlled descent, Lorenzo took out a strange funnel looking object from the ceiling, attached by pipe.
"Crossbowmen to the outer deck and latched on!" He shouted into it and Janos could hear his words being echoed through the entire vessel before he replaced the funnel. "Audron, do you know that thing is?!" The Leader of the Forsaken demanded, looking back over his shoulder quickly.
Janos by now had made some educated guesses. There was a creature he knew of, mostly in myth and barely recorded histories amongst his people, that fit the description of the creature hounding them.
-0-
"In my mind old stories, legends and fables began to rise. Whispered rumours which had persisted amongst the young had told of a creature that brought in its wakes nothing but utter devastation, a being from a time the holy edicts of the Divus had proclaimed to be unholy and barred from study. A truly monstrous thing - the winged personification of Death itself."
-0-
"Something older then the Pillars and more deadly than the most deranged Hylden." He breathed, scarcely believing the reality of it. Lorenzo cursed and marched right up to him, shaking his artificial hand in the Ancient Vampire's face.
"I want specifics, you bastard!" He snapped. "What IS IT?!"
This time something physical struck the side of the ship, a tremendously powerful blow by something that had to be at least as wide as a tree trunk. The hammer blow slammed into the vessel so hard that the sidewall of the bridge caved in, windows bursting in a spray of glass. Decking buckled up and ruptured beneath them as they were thrown violently from bulkhead to bulkhead. The ship descended alarmingly again, a sheer drop of a good few dozen feet.
Swearing imaginatively, Lorenzo scrambled up and bolts for the door. On his way past he grabbed one of several crossbows set into the wall along with a bolt quiver and made for the door that lead out onto the narrow decking outside. Janos was close behind him and had actually grabbed a crossbow and quiver for himself before he even realised what he was doing. He supposed he ought feel strange about handling weapons that had been designed for the sole purpose of killing his kind, but with the vessel under attack every hand was needed to defend it.
They had descended back down from the clouds now, the ground below how startlingly visible. If Janos was any judge they were flying over the mountain range that formed Nosgoth's backbone. Below them dark peaks jutted up, large spires of black rock that would spell doom for the Endurance if she collided with any of them. The wind tore at them out here and would have carried many of a man off if they had not taken the precaution of latching themselves to the railing with strapped attached to leather harnesses.
Without one, Janos paused at the door until one of the Forsaken who looked back pointed out a small side compartment where they were kept. It did not take him long to struggle into one as the harness had more then sufficient hole space for his wings, although he had to keep those tucked firmly to his back to prevent the wind drag from lifting him off his feet regardless.
"Fire as soon as you see a target!" Lorenzo was shouting from the line, busy latching the crossbow's handle into the space between the digits of his prosthetic hand. "Fill it with as many holes as you can." Along the rail the Forsaken soldiers were loading crossbows, mortars and an assortment of other projectile weapons including one man with what looked like a very complex looking bow.
There was a flash, a momentary but powerful flare of near blinding light from somewhere to their starboard side. Half a second later the air seemed to rip open with a powerful cracking blast of sound. Janos had been close to the point of a lightning strike once before in his long life. It was no less startling and nerve wrecking now and he, along with everyone else at the rail, recoiled with startled cries.
Thunder began to role around them, coming from sources near and far, flashes of lightning coming and going in the clouds above and from where strikes connected far below.
"The very sky rises against us!" Someone cried out in a hoarse, fearful voice which was so high pitched in alarm it was almost a squeak.
"Steady!" Lorenzo barked out in response.
When the thing came its attack was swift. Lightning erupted all around it as it burst from the clouds, barrelling down towards them. Janos had the impression of vast webbed wings and a gaping maw full of rows of jagged teeth, a lashing tail and claws as large as a man.
The weapons of the Forsaken spoke in response to the furious appearance, dozens of bolts flying into the air followed a half moment later by the booming rounds of mortar shells. Whatever training these soldiers undertook must have included intense marksmanship instruction as most of the projectiles struck the beast as it came down towards them.
The hits must have caused it some pain as they made to divert, spinning past them and down out of sight once more. The air current it dragged behind it made the battered vessel rock violently from side to side once more.
"It can't be..." Janos breathed to himself, having had enough of a look at the thing to have realised what it was.
"Where did it go?!" One of the Forsaken soldiers called out, looking around and over the rail trying to spot their attacker. A moment later a huge head attached at the end of a long curving neck whipped up and the man disappeared in a bloody haze. There was a sickening crunch, the squelch of rupturing organs and the flap of tremendous wings and he was gone. Before the Forsaken soldiers could respond, a long tail came arching around and slammed with full force into the hull of the ship. The impact jarred everyone violently. Someone's straps broke and with a scream they tumbled over the side of the railing and rapidly disappeared.
"If it goes for the balloon we're finished!" Enya's voice said shrilly although in the confusion Janos did not recognise her amongst everyone else, as they desperately tried to hold the line together and get more reinforcements from inside the ship. In the clouds above a dark shape was almost lazily turning about, coming back towards them with great sweeps of its wing. Intense flashes of lightning rippled in its wake, the accompanying thunder slowly growing louder.
"It's had every opportunity to do so already!" Lorenzo replied, calling over the wind. "The thing is toying with us!" He tapped the soldier on his right on the shoulder. "You, go tell the helm to take us in for a landing! We can't fight this thing in the air, it's too risky!"
"Yes sir!" The soldier quickly disappeared back inside. Janos quickly glanced down at the ground. The ship was still many hundreds of feet in the air and the descent was far too gradual. They had moments, perhaps less, before the creature would be on them again.
"I will obtain it's attention." The Ancient Vampire found himself saying, reaching for the straps that held him and unbuckling himself. Lorenzo turned sharply to look at him. "Use whatever time I can buy you wisely."
"You propose to defend 'US'? " Enya's voice was filled with baffled awe at the mere idea and he recognised her now, a little way down the railing from him. Everyone was looking at him and although he could not see the expressions through the masks their body language told of profound surprise.
Lorenzo reached out and grasped Janos by the arm with his good hand, shaking his head.
"I was told by messenger that your wings were clipped, you can not fly." Janos spread his wings out, feeling the drag of their air over his feathers.
"I have had no time or enough blood to properly heal." He admitted. "All I can do it glide, but I will do what I can regardless."
The beast was coming in again and this time, as it neared the long neck arched out and then lashed down with jaws agape. From that open maw there was a bright flash of red and then from the clouds a torrent of flame began to pour. A thick column of roiling, twisting fire which came dangerously close to the balloon of the ship. The helmsmen must have spotted the oncoming attack as the Endurance veered wildly to port, narrowly avoiding the stream but the heat of it was intense as it plummeted by.
Lorenzo let out a startled oath, glancing back and forth between Janos and the flames which had nearly consumed them all. Then the man yanked off his glove and tore the sleeve off his jacket, exposing his wrist.
"Drink!" He commanded, holding his arm up towards Janos's face. The Ancient Vampire stared at him in astonishment.
"What?" Janos' voice was barely a startled whisper and too low to be heard over the wind. Lorenzo gestured his hand closer to his lips.
"We don't have time to argue, take what you need from me! Do it!"
The blood required to heal his wings and restore them was sufficient to leave Lorenzo grey faced and trembling, falling back weakly into the arms of his soldiers from having lost so much. The renewed energies, the flowing power surging through him. Janos snapped out his wings to their full proper extent one more and soared into the air. It was a joy to finally be aloft again, flying as his kind had been intended to do since their birth.
-0-
"My wings were strong enough to hold me once more. Every instinct told me to flee, to leap from this vessel and make a bid for my own personal safety. But Lorenzo had shown faith in me, the first Human to have done so in many thousands of years. Mankind had labelled me as the source of all evil. Perhaps it was time to show them they were wrong."
-0-
Even the harsh winds around him were no impediment to him now. His restored wings carried him up and away from the ship in a swift motion, riding the spiralling currents with the skill of thousands of years of practise. In his hands he still grasped the crossbow he had taken. With his eyes locked firmly on the circling shape of the beast he fumbled for the quiver of bolts at his side, found it and slotted it into place on his weapon with a satisfying click.
He had no intention of fighting this thing. If it was what he dreaded it was then he would be no match for it. He doubted even Kain was truly capable of dealing this creature a death blow. All he needed to do was to make it focus its attention on him for a short amount of time, then evade its wrath. That itself was a momentous task but Janos hoped he was up to it.
The logical, rational part of his mind was screaming loudly at him that was he was about to do was utter madness and the height of folly. Very deliberately he put that side of his mind into a tight room and firmly locked the door. It was a part of his psyche that right now would be a major hindrance.
The creature was circling around again, preparing for another run at the Endurance. The way it so casually sailed about, beating its wings only when it needed sudden bursts of speed proven Lorenzo right. The beast wasn't taking this altercation seriously. Its attitude seemed like that of someone engaging in an only mildly entertaining distraction before getting onto more important matters.
Janos came in towards it, flying through the wisps of cloud just to its left hand side. Its long neck was tilted to stare at the descending airship so it didn't see him. Getting as close as he dared, Janos readied the weapon in his hands. He had never fired one himself before so when he pulled the trigger he was not prepared for the recoil. It knocked him back, causing him to flap his wings to steady himself in mid air.
The bolts shot forth and vanished into the clouds. Then there was a loud hiss and growl as they landed a hit on the creature, somewhere sensitive it seemed to produce that irritated noise. Its bulk spun about in mid air, the large wings beating harshly to allow it such acrobatics. The winds they produced pushed the clouds aside for a moment, allowing Janos to glance a glimpse of the head glaring back at him. The sight of that bestial face and those dark eyes caused him to drop like a stone, pulling his wings close to his body.
The instinct proved fortuitous as it allowed him to avoid to fireball that came hurtling through the air, an orb of elemental force so potent it would have reduced him to ashes had it connected. Keeping his wings pinned to himself he dived as quickly as he dared, glancing back over his shoulder to see that indeed he had provoked the creature into perusing him. The shadow of its colossal bulk with those beating wings could clearly be seen through the clouds.
Then the clouds came to an end and as Janos watched, the full form of the creature emerged plain to see. A long slender body with arching neck and tail. A crested head. Black and silver feathers lining the back of the skull and forepaws. Those huge wings beating to propel it through the air.
"Dragon!" Janos hissed and snapped his wings one, propelling him to the side. The beast dove right past him, snapping jaws coming close to severing his feet. The tail lashed out as it went by, attempting to swat him out of the air. But he snapped his wings back the other way and it sailed by with a gust of wind in its wake.
Furiously he beat his own wings to gain some altitude, forcing the shock of having his suspicions confirmed beyond all doubt deep into the cavities of his mind. Below him, the Dragon had levelled out and was circling back, its huge wings allowing it to gain height a lot faster. Quickly it came in for him again and as it flew, crackling bolts of lightning began forming in the air around it. Janos had seen the elemental power of Air used by the Serioli to the same effect more then once, but never on this scale.
The lightning bolts began to fly out towards him. They were fast projectiles but not accurate, exploding in the air around him. He was able to duck and dive out of the way. The explosion of light and sound all about him battered his ears constantly, shockwaves shaking the air and charging it with hostile energy. Janos had to rely on every ounce of strength he could muster to be agile enough to avoid being struck and every amount of concentration he could summon to avoid a fatal distraction that would allow the beast to catch up with him.
Out of the corner of one eye he could see the Endurance sink lower towards the ground, its balloon slowly deflating as it rechanneled its lighter then air gasses. The vessel was heading to a somewhat sheltered valley between two large mountain peaks. He just had to keep the creature occupied a little while longer.
A bolt of lightning exploded directly over his head. The noise of the snapping air around it shot through his head like a hammer blow and despite every effort not to he folded up and tumbled down through the air. Turning head over heals he struggled to extend his wings again. His vision was blurred and there was a sharp ringing in his ears which made it hard to focus.
Janos blinked several times to clear his eyes and when his vision finally cleared they did so on the sight of a gaping maw filled with teeth coming directly up from below. Instinct saved him from being broken in two with one snap and his wings pushed him out of the way just enough so that he tumbled down over the Dragon's face instead of directly into its mouth.
With a hard bump he caught hold of the thick divided crest that swept back from the skull and found himself being pulled along. The beast tossed it's head from side to side, either trying to look back to see him or shake him off. Janos had to cling tightly, lifting the crossbow he had managed to keep hold off with one hand and aiming for the side of the Dragon's head. Perhaps if he could hit it in the eye...
-"The fact the original breed of Vampires still exists baffles me."- A powerful radiated thought proclaimed deep into the recesses of his mind. He froze there, staring into the black beady eye which glared back at him. -"The fool Horkos was most fond of your kind. You were the only other species capable of flight and he revelled in such a union. He called it companionship."- Scaly lips pulled back over the rows of teeth very much like a sneer. -"Truly disgusting bestiality!"-
To have the thing speak into his mind, to hear words spoken by a creature supposedly extinct for countless eons sent a shudder down Janos' spine.
"Get you gone foul abomination!" He cried out, the wind howling about him. "You are abhorrent in the eye's of God!"
The Dragon snorted, nostrils distending before its long slender body did an abrupt twist in mid air, spiralling around so sharply Janos lost his grip and tumbled back. He fell between the pair of beating wings and down the beast's back before he caught hold of a large bony spike which protruded from the side of the creature's pelvis.
-"You absurd little gnat. You come flying into my face and dare call me abhorrent?"- The snarled words echoed in the vaults of the mind, dripping with venom and scorn. -"It is your kind that altered, that deviates from what they were meant to be. I am constant. I am incorruptible."-A terrible below burst from the Dragon's mouth, a cry that boomed louder then the claps of thunder all around. -"I am Thanatos!"-
That was a name only few amongst Janos' people had known. A name spoken off only amongst the original Guardian Circle and their closest councillors and kin. It was a name that came to them from a dark time before God had revealed the divine Wheel to them, a name that had come to mean chaos, destruction and death.
"You cannot be real! You are a fable!" Janos proclaimed in harsh denial, struggling to hold on with his body being tossed about. Below him the thick trashing tail lashed back and forth violently and above the sail sized wings flapped over and over, sending bellowing winds down at him.
-"And you are a delusional mutant."- The dragon retorted with profound contempt. -"And not a particularly good distraction."- Its tail lashed out so fast the action would only be called the crack of a whip. The motion jerked Janos' grip from him and he tumbled away, right into the path of the tail as it swung back up and smacked him across the chest. If the blow had been dead centre he probably would have been cleaved in two, but it merely scored a glancing blow. But this was enough to send him crumbling, winded, down towards the ground.
He was perhaps a mere hundred feet from the ground before his wings finally managed to spread out once more. His descent slowed, but not enough to prevent a harsh and painful fall. He collided with a large rock jutting out from the side of a mountain peak, spun away from it before falling down into a thick and near choking patch of tree sized mossy weeds which clogged the valley floor.
Lying on his back, stunned into immobility, Janos could only watch as the Dragon about turned in the sky above him and sent a crackling bolt into the Endurance. This time the lightning struck directly into the ship, a powerful explosion sending the vessel spiralling down towards the ground with pieces of metallic debris tumbling away from it. The balloon full of the precious gass keeping it aloft burst in a great rupturing and the vessel dropped from its slow descent into a plummet.
The moment after the vessel disappeared there was a terrible crash which echoed through the mountains lingeringly. The Dragon circled over the scene for some time, neck tilted down towards the ground as it observed the crash. Then it beat its wings and began to fly away, back into the clouds. But before it did, it cast Janos one more contemptuous glance.
-"The skies are mine, mutant. They are not intended for you, the Hylden or upstart filthy Humans. Remain on the ground, in the dirt where you belong. If I find you buzzing around me, like the insect you are, again I will render you down to the parts that form you and scatter them to the wind."-
With that the beast from the prehistoric days of an infant Nosgoth disappeared, vanishing into the darkness of smog Kain had sought to blanket the world with.