-0-
-0-

The hazy vision of that mutant, unearthly eye rotated like a ball in a fixture to gaze directly at him. The figure eight pupil widened out until its edges nearly touched the sides of the blue iris. Then it contracted horizontally until it was little more in a vertical line of deep black in a circle of luminescence. The lens warped the image of it as it moved, making it appear wider or thinner depending on the action but the true monstrous nature of that eye could not be denied.

It was the type of eye Janos supposed might belong to a creature of the deep, adapted to view the world in the dark depths of the ocean. Somehow he was glad of the indistinctness of the image. He felt that seeing the eye in perfect clarity would be more then he could handle. If this was truly the eye of God, the actual living eye of that entity he and his people had so devotedly worshipped, then it was revealed to him here and now as the eye of a monster.

"You were a fool to come here alone, Audron." Asmodeus was saying with a growling sneer, holding that gleaming white sword of his out before him. Now he was close up and not engaged in the chaos of a struggle Janos recognised it quite easily as being of Vorador's making. His style was unmistakable. "You caught me off guard before, but you're no match for me one on one." The edge of the blade gleamed brightly in the luminous glow cast by the lens. Long distinct shadows filled the room.

"I am not speaking to you, Divus." Janos replied flatly, showing neither fear or reserve. He did not even alter his glance to look at him. Instead his gaze was directly firmly at the lens and the vision of that monstrous eye which gazed back through it. The eye's pupil contracted and widened several times, each movement slowing until finally it finally settled.

"Would you turn from me?" That same deep, echoing voice asked; a voice which once more seemed to rise up out of the depths of some vast bottomless pit. "The last faithful man of an ancient and noble race? Would you forever divert your people from my sight?" The luminescence of that blue iris steadily increased and in proportion so did the glow illuminating the chamber, the shadows all about growing slender and long. "It is not too late to change your course, Janos Audron. Your journey has been a long and dangerous one, full of perils both physical and spiritual. You have been tested." That glow, so all encompassing, so radiant, increased invitingly. "Renew your faith in me, for only I am the sole road to salvation. Only through me, through the cleansing of the Wheel, can true peace be earned."

Janos stared back into the depths of that glow, his expression never altering for a moment. It remained stoic and filled with profound disillusionment and disappointment.

"Fine words. Very fine words." He admitted into the silence that followed. "Or at least, that is what I used to think." He shook his head slowly, never taking his gaze from that eye that watched him so scrutinizingly. "But I can ignore the evidence of my own eyes no longer. I have seen enough of the struggles, the suffering and agonies inflicted upon all of us to know the truth finally. The Wheel, the cleansing cycle, was never about renewing the spirit through eternal reincarnation was it?"

The linked pupil snapped open wide at his words. Clearly they had not been expected and Janos could see with even more bitterness that was the reaction of one who had hoped something secret would remain so. In that moment all the worst was confirmed. All the stories and accounts he had heard all revealed to be true in that one, single motion of surprise.

"No." The ancient Vampire went on with a flat tone of voice. "But rather that the energies one soul acquires during its life are drained when they die, then sent back out to do the same over again. Like a fisherman, reeling in his line only to cast it out once more once he has his catch." There was no pain in saying this aloud, even directly to the being which had been the centre of his sense of veneration and hope. Just a feeling of weary acceptance and resignation. "Everything else was just fancy wordplay. Emotional window dressing. Damkina was right. She had always been right."

Asmodeus' expression as he listed to the exchange was one of annoyed displeasure but slowly he began to grin in a new wry amusement. He lowered his sword, placing the tip to the floor and resting one hand on the pommel.

"Well, well, well. I never thought I'd see the like." The king of the Divus admitted, the smile on his face oily and condescending. "The little song and dance routine seen through at last."

The eye in the lens rotated about to glare back at Asmodeus, the pupil narrowing so much it was a perfect vertical line.

"You forget your place and you overstep your bounds, Asmodeus!" The voice from the depths was filled with censure and reproach. Asmodeus turned to look back over his shoulder.

"With respect, Master; with the Equinox so close it hardly matters now." He said dismissively.

"Matters?" Janos repeated dimly. That word resonated through his very being like the toning note of a bell. It was like a single hot spark falling upon a well prepared pile of kindling. The fire that rose from that single spark did so quickly, surging through him and reaching heights he had never experienced before. It was a rage without equal from any point in his life, erasing all the barriers and self control he had erected within himself. It was even more of a blazing anger then that which had prompted him to batter Uriel to the brink of death. "MATTERS?!" He roared the word, causing the king of Fanum-Divus to turn to look at him with surprise.

"My people plunged themselves into an apocalyptic war for the sake of those teachings! The ground from coast to coast was soaked with blood!" Janos' words were so filled with rage he was slurring. "Billions across all three races were slaughtered! And all that staggering amount of death was merely to provide ... provide a meal?! You had better damn believe it matters!" His grip on the hammer hilt in his hands tightened so much that his knuckles turned bloodless white and the tool shook in his grasp.

Asmodeus regarded the outburst with mute surprise at first but that soon slipped into a grim dismissive look of contempt.

"You could have been one of us, you know. You had the potential." He cocked his head to one side in thought. "'Audron-Divus' has a nice ring to it, don't you think? I could certainly have done with a reliable right hand after Ophiel's betrayal." With a little regretful sigh he shook his head and then lifted the sword.

"Now though? Now you're just another of the flotsam." The king of Fanum-Divus turned to look back at the lens one last time. "With your permission, Master?" He asked, gesturing with the staff towards Janos, his meaning ominously clear.

The image of that eye within the lens stared at its most elevated servant for a long moment, before slowly moving to look at Janos. Janos glared back, more fiercely then he had ever thought he could be in the presence of a God, the fire of his anger flaming within him like an inferno.

"So be it." The voice which had methodically taught his people, sometimes through his prophets, sometimes directly, said with finality. This simple statement, a simple sentence of three small words, was effectively a death warrant; handed down for the mere crime of challenge.

Asmodeus nodded with a smile and with sword in hand he began forward. Janos however did not move, did not even react. His gaze was still fixed on the lens and the eye beyond it. This was the moment which he thought would never come, the moment where he would do something was not just unthinkable and unimaginable. Something most of his generation would have ostracized him for. Something he would once have sooner flew directly into the sun then ever let play across his brain never mind pass his lips.

"I reject it." He said. Asmodeus paused, sword half raised and gleaming.

"What?" The Divus asked in confusion, an eyebrow raised.

"I reject the Wheel of Fate." Janos declared in a voice which despite his resolve trembled around the edges at the finality of what he was doing. "I reject its callousness, its fatalism, its disregard for the sanctity of life." It took some effort. In fact it took every ounce of courage and will he had, but Janos Audron looked straight into the eye of the creature he had called God and proclaimed; "And I reject you!"

Pure instinct drove him to do what he did next; a deep rooted need to lash out, to give back some of the pain he had experienced for so long. He could no more have resisted this base need for revenge then he could resist his own bodies need to breathe.

"This is for my son!" He cried in absolute defiance, bringing back the hammer he carried in one hand, arm tensed. Asmodeus brought his sword up before him, ready to block whatever attack Janos made. The cocky half smile on his face displayed more then words his absolute confidence in being able to ward off anything thrown at him. Here was where his arrogance and ego finally got the better of him.

He was so certain that only he could be the target of Janos' rage that it left him taken aback when instead, Janos sent the hammer spinning directly over his head. That one moment of surprise, of inaction, prevented the king of Fanum-Divus from doing a thing as the hammer soared through the air and crashed with full force directly into that strange suspended lens. The sound was deafening, a high pitched screeching and tearing, as if a million windows had been shattered at all once.

The image of the eye, pupil wide in surprise, vanished instantly as the hammer and the lens met. The contact between creation and tool lasted for only a single fraction of an instant, a piece of time so fantastically small that it was to brief for the mind to comprehend. But in that flash of happening there was unleashed energies the likes of which awed Janos to feel them. They were so colossal and titanic that it had made the summoning the Pillars which he had witnessed seem pedestrian by comparison.

-0-

"Past. Present. Future. All three aspects of time flinched as if I had dealt them all a direct blow. And perhaps unknowingly, I had."

-0-

That disorientating experience of feeling the three states of time recoil like that was enough to send Janos staggering backwards clutching his head as his perceptions of causality reeled. It left him not knowing if he had come to this place in search of the staff or if he had come here to drop it so Asmodeus could pick it up again. His view of time was so messed up he did could not tell what event took place before the other. When his head finally cleared and he looked up again, it was in time to watch in fascinated awe as a cloud of glittering light spread out from the point of impact.

The cloud was like a billion, billion points of light all moving away from one another; expanding outward at a slow enough pace for their passage to be observed. It was like watching the creation of the night sky, as if each point of light was a new born star looking for its place in the heavens. They expanded out, widening the distance between them as they went so that gradually they revealed that their point of origin had been the space where the lens had been. Now though, the space between the delicate pieces of metal which made up its frame was empty and with a sudden sharp clatter even that collapsed. The hammer and the lens. When both had collided together they had ceased to exist.

Asmodeus beheld the broken ruin with his face turning white in sheer unrestrained horror. With a clatter he dropped the staff from his hand and almost his sword as well, the point striking the floor.

"No, no, NO NO! The Tempus Crux! You've destroyed it!" He cried, voice shrill with dismay. Instantly he whirled on Janos, his face full of a mad desperate frenzy. "You fool! Do you have any idea what you've done?!"

Janos did not quite hear the end of his sentence. A new sound had been growing, a terrible roar which had begun as a rumble at the back of the mind, too low to notice. But steadily its volume had increased and along with it came a vibration that could felt through the soles of the feet. The floor beneath them was beginning to tremble, shuddering as if in the grip of an earth tremor. The tiles which formed the surface of the room rattled against each other loudly and from somewhere both above and below came a deep groan.

Cracks began to spread out from the centre of the room where the lens had been across the tiles. Small at first, but soon growing wider and spreading with alarming speed. The tiles closest to the centre were the first go, shattering like ice and collapsing in the shaft below, the hole widening out like a mouth opening to swallow all before it. Massive fissures began to snap open across the roof, spreading out from the centre and dropping tiles by the dozens to either smash upon the floor or fall into the pit.

The tremor like shaking worsened with each passing second, as did the roar and groan. Cracks and fissures moving outward, winding their way along like twisting snakes. Janos glanced about him in confusion and growing alarm, watching as the room's disintegration came obvious. He backed up a step at a time as the cracks spread their way towards him and with his attention distracted he almost did not notice Asmodeus' lunge toward him until it was too late.

That white sword was thrust towards like pike a spear point and had Janos not noticed a tell tale blur and instinctively rolled to one side, it would have pierced right through his chest. Asmodeus swung his sword after him, a cleaving swipe which whistled overhead missing Janos' ear tips by a fraction of an inch.

"I will make you suffer for this!" The king of the Divus spat with hateful venom and before Janos could move back he was caught in the side by a kick which sent him sprawling back across the chamber. His hands caught on a ridge of tile just in time to stop himself from being carried over the edge of a widening crack which plunged down seemingly infinitely. His vision swam at the pain, everything before him a chaos of dulled sound.

Before him was the staff, laying on the ground where Asmodeus had let it drop. It was slowly tilting, once more, over the edge of an abyss ready to topple away out of reach. Alarm filled him instantly at that prospect and with fear driving him, he lunged forward with all his might and grabbed the length of the staff before it fall. The action saved him from another attack as the tip of the white sword stabbed down where he had been laying less then a moment before.

Turning about quickly, Janos raised the staff to ward off the sword as he came down at him again on the back swing. The blade edge struck the staff with all the force Asmodeus seemed to have in his angered body and bit deep, snapping the red serpent wrapped about the shaft in two. With the blade lodged there the two of them struggled back and forth, the staff and sword between them each trying to outdo the other. Straining, sweat grimed faces glaring back at one another.

Finally however the blade proved the superior weapon and with a loud snap the staff parted in two. Janos was left awkwardly clutching one stumpy end, the tip of the staff with the all important and essential ignitor pearl. Alarmed he moved backwards but the heel of his foot caught on a jagged crumbling tile and he toppled backwards, saved from falling back down the widening crack by his wings as they snapped open wide to provide him support.

Asmodeus moved in, raising his sword high over his head with both hands grasped about the hilt ready to deliver a final blow. His expression was one of near craved jubilation mixed with inert frustration. Janos knew in that moment startling moment that with his arms, legs and wings occupied, he had no means of avoiding this strike. The only way to save himself was to let the precious orb drop in order to free up his hands and to do so now would render their mission here a failure and damn Nosgoth to an eternity of darkness and decay.

Then without warning, a surprise to them both, a dark shape came hurtling out from the chambers doorway and slammed with force into the king of the Divus. The unexpected blow sent Asmodeus staggering backwards, his wings flapping wildly to keep him on his feet. Janos looked up at his saviour standing over him, long white hair flowing out behind him along with the blood red drape baring the jagged symbol of the Vampiric Empire.

"Kain!" He gasped, struggling to try and pull himself free from the gap before it widened enough to swallow him.

The would be Emperor of Nosgoth wasted no words. The Reaver swung around and Asmodeus raised his white sword to find it off, but only just in time. Kain pressed on, his face grim and set. He slashed again and again at Asmodeus, driving him back step by step. Kain's aggressively fast tactics denying him the chance to keep his footing or even strike back. The Reaver blade was a screaming blur of serpentine death, slashing, hacking, thrusting, driving in constantly over and over.

Asmodeus was now frantic and it was clear by the panic in his eyes that he only had a mind to escape, his wings fanning out as he readied himself to take the first opportunity to take flight. A poor choice of action. Just at that moment the floor beneath them gave a sudden jerk, leaping upwards before splitting wide, the entire chamber cracking into two. The ceiling parted above them, tearing apart like paper. A torrent of tiles and thicker slabs of masonry came tumbling down in a sudden cascade.

The rubble came right down onto Asmodeus, catching him by his wings and dragging him to the ground. There was a loud sickening crunch as the bones in the wings were crushed, followed immediately by a scream of agony bursting from Asmodeus' lips. Thankfully this too was silenced when the floor gave way under the pressure of the collapsing ceiling. Janos' last view of Asmodeus was the king of the Divus plunging, sword and all, into the darkness below with his scream echoing down after him.

Kain glanced about, watching in alarm as the room's collapse entered a frantic state, large chunks of stone falling from the ceiling and walls. The floor was disintegrating beneath them, the tiles disappearing rapidly into the darkness beneath like water flowing off the edge of a cliff.

"Quickly, Janos! We have to leave!" He called out, turning around quickly. With that, Janos was in full agreement.

The two of them plunged out of the chamber at a dead run, a bellowing cloud of dust racing after them as the entire room collapsed in on itself with a near deafening crash. They did not stop running, for the disintegrating effect was by no means confined to that mere room. It was spreading rapidly down the corridor down which they were running, the walls crumbling as if the bricks no longer wished to be bound to one another. Janos risked a look back as they ran, the orb off of the staff still in one hand. The floor was tumbling away, the leading edge of that collapse gaining on them.

Soon they were racing out onto a battlement which topped the edge of one of Fanum-Divus' many terraces, a large open space which allowed for a view of the central pillar of the city. Janos found himself taken aback as he beheld the startling sight of the entire mass of Fanum-Divus visibly shaking, trembling before him as if it were ill with an fever. Towers were leaning over, shivering and swaying like a tree in a gale. Cracks, small and large, were running up and down walls accompanied by the ripping sound of tearing stone. From everywhere came alarmed cries and shouts of panic.

Then suddenly a massive stone came loose and tumbled free from a building high above. The block had to be at least a hundred feet across or more and then it crashed into the courtyard below it shook the ground so harshly that both Kain and Janos were thrown from their feet to land unceremoniously on their backsides. The blow increased the spread of the destruction, entire walls giving way to tumble down, their own collapse knocking over towers which in turn smashed into yet more buildings. All of Fanum-Divus was coming undone before their very eyes.

"What is happening?!" Janos demanded, struggling to right himself despite the near constant tremors.

"That lens was the Tempus Crux!" Kain shouted back over the roar of collapsing masonry and tumbling stone. "The city was built around its presence! It can't exist here without it!" The ground beneath them suddenly buckled up, snapping and wrenching itself apart. Cracks bursting open like torn wounds. Janos staggered, almost dropping the orb. Thankfully the decorative snakes head still attached made an excellent handle.

"Hold on!" Kain said and before Janos had a chance to say so much as a word, Kain had wrapped an arm about his waist. Kain's bounding leap had them both in the air, soaring away from the battlement before it came apart and collapsed. They soared over the destroyed courtyard below and onto the face of a wall which, for the moment at least, had not succumbed to the general destruction.

Kain sank his talons into the stone to anchor himself before hauling Janos up to allow the ancient Vampire to gain his own handhold. Janos scrambled for a moment before he gained leverage. Kain did not wait and began climbing, pulling himself up by whatever grip he could find. Janos followed as best he could, tucking the orb into his tunic to free up his hands. Together they hauled himself up off of the side of the building, climbing higher towards another parapet high above.

All about them the collapse of Fanum-Divus continued, the very foundations of the city compromised. Buildings were toppling backward, loosed from their grip on the whole to fall down into the infinite blackness of the dark void beneath. As each single stone fell into the reaches of that black abyss they vanished, ceasing to be. The void swallowed everything dropped into it and reduced it to nonexistence. The city of the Divus was quite literally crumbling into nothingness.

"My god..." Janos breathed, watching as a large portion of the central shaft of the city gave way and began to slide down, breaking everything in its path like a cataclysmic avalanche. Its passage kicked up a massive dust cloud which bellowed up after them in a sudden rush, causing them both to pause and cover their mouths.

"This is hardly the time to be awestruck, Audron!" Kain coughed at him, returning to his climb. Janos shook himself and nodded, quickening his own pace. Together they reached the top and hauled himself up over a parapet which itself seemed loose and ready to fall.

Janos found to this surprise that they had climbed back over the far edge of the courtyard in which they had arrived. The Endurance was still there, edged into the crevice it had ploughed for itself. Forsaken soldiers were already scrambling over it, frantically trying to repair some of the damage and re-inflate the balloon. Gathered about where the many varied beings which had made up their army of invaders and rebels; Hylden, Vampires and Humans, both of the free and slave variety. Everyone regardless of race was looking about themselves as the city they had fought through disintegrated about them.

The courtyard was not large enough to hold all of them, especially with the addition of Ewoden's lycanthrope pack and the golden haired slave race. The four Turelim were trying to help right the Endurance, working together to use their strength to pull the ship to an upright position allowing the Forsaken to work on patching the dented hull.

"Vorador!" Janos called out, spotting a pair of green ears sticking above the general height of the crowd. The sound all around was loud and chaotically constant, but Vorador's hearing was as sharp as ever. He turned quickly and spotted them, raising a hand to wave them on in.

"Quickly this way!" He called back. Kain and Janos had to pick their way over the stones of the parapet, the crowd of milling rebels too thick to try and push their way through. Everyone had gathered there, Raziel, Umah, Ophiel along with many others. Everyone looked battle weary and were covered in gashes and other marks, but none seemed badly hurt.

It was as they came up to the edge of the courtyard through which the Endurance had plunged that Janos saw it. A gaping hole in the air, bleeding red energy out of its terrible torn shape, suspended a few feet from the edge and large enough to allow the flying vessel passage through. It seemed Kothar had already made them a passage out of this unnatural void and none too soon.

"How soon can you take off?" Kain asked Lorenzo the moment they arrived. The leader of the Forsaken for once did not appear jovial. His face was grim and set with pain. Janos noticed a bloody gash across his good shoulder, tied up with a makeshift bandage of darkly stained clothe.

"Any moment now." Lorenzo said, gesturing with his artificial limb to the ship and then back to the crowd which stretched back through the doorway leading into the courtyard. A doorway which was beginning to shudder and crack along its edges. "But I can't take this rabble on the Endurance! We'd never be able to lift off with that kind of weight!"

Janos glanced back across the crowd. There were indeed so many. Thousands at least, an entire separate sub section of humanity, added to their numbers. But they could not just leave them here. Descendants of the army which destroyed the civilisation he had known as his own they may be, but he could not imagine abandoning them to share this cities terrible fate.

Ophiel turned to look back over the crowd with him, her face pensive and alarmed; an expression he had yet to see on her. There was fear in her eyes, a fear for the people she had taken under her wing. They looked at each other, joined in their fear for the lives of so many innocent people. Then as one they turned about once more to gaze over at the tip Kothar had left for them, as wide as the one which had allowed them entry although far closer. Much closer. Leaping distance.

"Then its time for one last leap of faith!" Ophiel called out firmly and without waiting she scrambled up the side of the Endurance's bulk, giving herself an elevating position even going so far as to push a startled Forsaken soldier out of her way.

"Remain and die, or jump for the chance freedom!" She called out in a voice loud enough to rise above the crash and boom of the collapsing city and the cries of the fearful. Heads turned to look at her, not just those with golden hair. The former Divus pointed ominously towards the open hole, the tear in reality which only a Dragon had been capable of making. "What is your choice?"

The question hung in the air for a moment, the silence broken only by the groaning of sliding stone and the crash of collapsing buildings. Faces turned from her, to the gaping hole, then back to the city of Fanum-Divus as it shuddered in its death throes. There never really was any choice to make. As one the army they had amassed turned and made directly for the edge of the courtyard parapet.

The first over were the werewolves, scrambling past everyone else. Their powerful legs propelled them easily through the air to tumble down into the torn gash and vanish into its depths. The flood of them continued, the pack moving as one, leaping their way finally out of the city in which they had been confined for so long. Ewoden, the alpha male of the pack, went last to make sure that all of his pack had gone through before he leapt for his own safety and freedom.

"Fly you fools!" Ajatar commanded in a loud if hoarse voice and the Serioli took to the air, each of them grabbing a Human or a surprised Hylden and hauling them up into the air. They doubled the amount of souls they took with them that way, plunging as a flock into the open tear. Beneath them the Hylden with Enlil at their head, dived after them. The sight of Vampires and Hylden performing a task together, even one as unique and fought with danger as this, was a bizarre unearthly thing.

The mass of Humanity poured over the edge like a breaking wave, thousands of men, women and children diving through the gap in fear of their lives. Many Vampire hunters were simply swept up in the general movement, forced into leaping due to the fact that if they did not they would be pushed out regardless. Many discarded their own weapons in their frantic rush to escape, many a crossbow or crude implement tumbling out over the parapet to fall into the dark void with the other debris.

"Time to go!" Lorenzo shouted, leaping for the rail on the Endurance and catching hold of it with his metallic hand. Kain followed suit, grabbing hold of the vessel with both hands. Raziel dived for the rail of the outer ring, catching hold of it and hauling Ophiel and Umah up after him. Vorador hauled himself up the side, climbing until he reached the top. There Janos joined him, one sweep of his wings flying him up to join the others.

"Balam!" Kain called out. The Turelim understood at once and together all four of them placed their hands against the hull of the Endurance and heaved, pushing with all their strength. Their muscles bulged with the strain but their strength proved sufficient, forcing the vessel backwards with a loud grating sound. They gained momentum, forcing the Endurance back faster and faster until with one final thrust they shoved it out over the edge. Then as the vessel fell directly into the open maw of the gash, they leapt in after it.

Janos clung to the Endurance with every ouch of strength in his battered body, a fierce wind tearing at his wings and clothes, the drag threatening to rip him from the ship. He forced one eye open, his vision half obscured by his cowl and the whipping of his own hair. The gash through which they had plunged was receding behind them, lost in a growing mist of blue and red energy. But through it Janos watched as the dark void was fed the shuddering, collapsing remains of the city they had only just escaped in time.

-0-

"I had one last terrible glimpse of the impossible city. It was the last any being would ever see of it. Since I had commended its destruction, it seemed only fitting. The city of the Divus, the place deemed heaven by so many, was disintegrating before my eyes. Despite my earnest rejection of all it stood for, I could not help but find myself regarding its cataclysmic destruction with stunned awe and an admitted feeling of loss."

-0-

Exactly when they arrived back in the reality they had left behind it was hard to say. The first Janos knew of it was the shuddering crash when the Endurance landed belly first on the black ground. The impact, so unexpected, succeeded in making him loose his grip. He spun away from the ship as it ground its way through the dirt and landed with a heavy thump face down on the ground. It wasn't a great fall and he quickly pushed himself back up, more shaken and disoriented then hurt, coughing to clear his throat and covered in dirt.

The Endurance had come to a stop a short distance away, wedged up against a rock which had impeded its progress. Dust thrown up from its rough landing was already beginning to settle, although the vessel had carved a large groove in the earth as it went. The designer of the Endurance had known their own quite well. Since he had first seen the craft it had crashed twice, been assaulted by Thanatos in the air twice and survived both invading and escaping the home of the Divus themselves. This ancestor of Lorenzo's, Liese, must have been an engineering genius.

They were back on the flat black plain where they had all first gathered, where Kain had made his offer of alliance against their common enemy. The dark peak of Schwarzkern loomed on the northern horizon, a dark spire with its peak still bubbling with smoke. Despite the time they had spent on their raid, which had to be an hour or two if not more, the light had not changed. It seemed the exact same time of day as when they had left. Glancing up, Janos saw the ghostly form of Kothar circling high above. No doubt this was his doing, returning them from Fanum-Divus' unique pocket of existence outside of time to perhaps no more then a few seconds since they left.

All above him Janos could see those who had leapt for their safety and freedom. All of them had made it, every single Human, Hylden and Vampire. They all looked as battered and bruised as he felt, but they were indeed alive. Many of them were trying to help their children, who were sniffling and crying from what they had had to endure.

"Well FUCK ME!" Lorenzo declared with almost more characteristic feverish levity. His voice and statement echoed loudly into the groggy half silence. "I can't believe we just did that!"

The mass majority of the forces of each race had had to be left behind, as the Endurance could not hold them all. Quickly more of every race were coming to assist and Janos had the unique view of watching as Hylden's helped staggering Vampires to their feet, Turelim giants stepping gingerly over sprawled dazed Humans before offering them carried supplies and medical wrappings. It was a staggering suspension of ancient hatreds and even the relationship between predator and prey. Janos simply stood there and stared at it. The picture stirred in his breast a powerful hope, a hope he felt foolishly naïve for allowing. It could not last, he knew that. But still, small moments like this, were worth more precious treasure in all ages of the world.

There was a hand suddenly on his shoulder. Turning he found the Seer standing there behind him, glad in a formal blue gown with the crown of bronze and jade upon her brow. Her gaze was direct, her eyes intense.

"The staff? Do you retrieve it?" She asked in a voice of hushed desperation. Janos blinked, suddenly recalled as to what they had just accomplished and why. The enormity of it finally seemed to dawn on him and he shuddered, feeling suddenly very unsure of the foundations of reality itself. Nevertheless he firmly squashed the uncertainty and reached into his tunic, taking out the orb and holding it before her.

"The important part." He said, trying to sound more jovial and wry then he really felt. She took it from him, an expression of upmost relief and jubilation crossing her face and her eyes burning with excitement.

"Then it is nearly over." The Seer breathed. Frowning, she pulled on the snake head still clutching the orb in its mouth. It came away quite easily and she tossed it indifferently away, leaving the orb free from the confines Moebius had set it in so long ago. She cradled the orb lovingly, as if it were a children she had just birthed. "The Pillars can rise once more and the nightmare this world has been forced to endure can finally be put to rest."

Janos hoped that was the case. With every fibre of his being he hoped that was the case. What they had just accomplished was so monumental that nothing less would top it. Nothing less could be fitting as a final crescendo. They had come far. They had all come far. Raziel, Kain, Vorador, himself. Everyone had been involved in a struggle which spanned centuries and pushed them back and forth across the streams of time itself. All of their struggling and countless battles had brought them all here, to this moment of triumph. It had brought them battered, bruised and dizzy but it had brought them nonetheless.

To be here; to stand with these people, in this time and place, to be one with them in body and spirit was nothing short of an honour. An honour which filled him with more sense of pride, joy and belonging then the Wheel of Fate had ever given him. It wasn't a substitute for the loose of faith. It was a renewal of it, but this time for something worthy. Something real. Something he was sure Chokhmah would have loved to have been a part of.

His joy quickly turned to irritation when he saw the oily, smug smile in the Seer's face as she looked at him. Cradling the orb under one arm she had cocked her head to one side and was giving him a look of sadistic pleasure.

"So Janos, what say you now?" She asked. He didn't need to inquire what she meant.

"Do you really me to just come out and say it? Isn't it enough that it be obvious?" He asked her flatly and with disapproval.

"No, no its not." The Hylden woman told him with irrepressible perverse mirth. "You OWE me this." That, Janos was forced to admit, was quite true. He let out a long sigh and turned to face her fully. Looking her directly in the eye, Janos Audron said to Princess Damkina;

"You were right Damkina. And I was wrong."

He put all the sincerity and feeling he could into those eight words. A simple enough thing to say but right then and there it meant more then an entire speech. The Seer's smile became less sinister, softening into one of happy acceptance and resignation. Janos could almost see the resentment she had harboured for so long slipping away, draining from her like water.

"Thank you, Audron." She said and her soft voice made him feel somehow light and joyful all over again.

"Oh I thought after so long, you might have learned not to be so grim Kain!" Umah was saying as the two of them came to join the others beside the dusty hull of the Endurance.

Ophiel looked immensely tired but a teased smile of satisfaction was tugging at the corner of her lips. Looming over them, Balam was grinning from ear to ear so much he was showing off every one of his sharp teeth. Vorador was calm and stoic as was his usual fashion, arms folded behind his back. Lorenzo and Skelim were off to one side, their armour dented in many paces and bandages wrapped about their injuries. Ajatar did not seem in the better a shape, two long un-bandaged gashes running down the length of her left arm, but she ignored them as if they weren't even there.

Umah was the more jubilant of the gathering, her energy bubbling out of her like that of an eager child. She hardly seemed able to keep still. Raziel was frowning, his eyes narrowed and brow furrowed. His ruined form did not allow for much facial expression but his eyes made up for it. Right now those eyes did not seem jubilant in the least. Kain seemed just as grim if not more. He was leaning against the side of the Endurance, his white hair dishevelled and hanging down over half his face. The Reaver blade rested in his grasp, point down on the earth.

"You forged an impossible alliance and defeated our common enemy! At least smile for your victory!" Umah continued prompting him, herself grinning almost inanely, as if experience a high from the jubilation of the raids outcome.

"Victory?" Kain repeated, looking up as if he been in a world of his own and only just heard her. Slowly he swept all those present with a flat look, lingering on Raziel at the end. The blue wraith returned the silent glance and shook his head slightly. Kain grunted and folded his arms over his chest. "I sincerely wish that was the case Umah, I really do."

Umah did not have time to react to his words. Above them, Balam drew in breath in alarm.

"My lord! To the south!" The Turelim giant cried out, raising a hand to point back towards the mountain range. Everyone turned quickly to follow his gaze.

A pillar of light was rising high into the sky, piercing the clouds above like a needle pushed through a sheet of fabric. It was far away so from here it appeared like a single line of near neon blue against the darkness of the smog filled sky. But its effects could be seen all the same. The clouds about it were churning, spinning, gathering into a sluggishly swirling vortex with that beam at its centre. The effect was slowly spreading, more and more cloud stirred and drawn into the gathering storm. Lights like bolts of lightning, blue to match the needles colour, were flickering throughout the clouds although were never actually directly seen.

A low confused rumble began to spread amongst the masses of people all gathered here as more and more of them noticed the ominous phenomenon. Everyone turned to stare in confusion, a mass of curious eyes gazing upon the distant line. A low rumble began from that far away point, a sound not quite like thunder. It sounded more like the boom of a colossal base drum being struck over and over. Even this far distant the sound resonated uncomfortable through the body.

Janos saw with uncomfortable realization that the blue of that strange phenomenon was the same near neon blue of the eye he had beheld in the now shattered lens.

"What...what is that?" Skelim asked, his voice breathy from both fear and exhaustion.

"The lake of the dead. The abyss, I ought think." Raziel replied with an edge in his voice. "It's where the concentrated attention of their God is most focused."

Kain stared up at that needle of light for a long moment, his face settling into steady forbidding lines. With a grunt he pushed himself from the Endurance's hull and strode to the front of the group, sliding the Reaver across his back with one hand.

"Forgive me for using the tired old cliché, but all we've done here is win a battle. That's all destroying Fanum-Divus was. A battle. " He told them, his gaze fixed on the southern horizon and the struggle yet to come. "The war is far from over."