A/N - I have gone back and rewritten the first...well...twenty four chapters. I've revised the following chapters to fit with what went on before but the first twenty five chapters are now very different and thankfully don't read like they were written by an unpracticed schoolgirl - sorry past me :P
I'll be carrying on weekly now until it's finished now that that monumental undertaking is out of the way, thanks for your patience and continued support :)

28. From Ourselves
-Kain

There were few tasks I could entrust to my sons. While they were more the capable of overseeing the daily life of Nosgoth without incident, there were few tasks of my own I would ever see fit to consign to them. Raziel would accept the undertaking with a significant amount of noise and undignified complaints that such work was beneath him, sometimes I wonder if I will not cast him into the abyss on account of his caustic tongue. Turel on the other hand would take on my labours with grace, until the opportunity came for him to parade my trust in him before his elder brother and to a lesser extent his younger ones. He remained unreconciled to his position in life. My third son, Dumah, would never utter a word of complaint if I were to task him with a secret labour, but he would frown and struggle to understand the complexities of politics. Far too up front to engage in espionage, I did not resent him for it, it was after all refreshing to converse with one who had little interest and even less ability in deception. Unlike Zephon who had too much interest and even greater ability in deceit. I could not trust him with a task simply because I could not trust him. He would take my schemes and twist them to suit his own covert needs. My lastborn, Melchiah, was equally unlikely to gain an assignation from me, but wholly because of my own shame. I was too headstrong when I had raised him and it was he, and his ill advised clan, who suffered for it every day of their miserable existence. I would not bring him into my confidences for the shame I felt when I beheld him, by no means the most disappointing of my progeny but who would never be given the chance to shine while I shrank from such an obvious reminder of my own weakness.

Thank the Gods for Rahab.

As with Dumah, Rahab had nothing to prove. He did not suffer with the vanity of his two eldest brothers, nor did he resent his youth as was the way of those younger than him. That and he held me in an esteem that the others, without exception, did not. For Rahab I was more than his liege lord, more even than his father. I was his creator, the one to whom he owed his very existence and for that I was like unto a God in his mind. It was for this reason that I could trust Rahab completely with anything, no matter how volatile, controversial or mundane. He would consign his entire race to the abyss and raze his cities at my whim without a word of complaint. Not even a question or even the thought of a question. It was enough that I asked it of him.

And so it was that when Megara returned with news of her brothers' fractious relationships I knew it was only Rahab I could trust to assist with the task before me. A task made infinitely easier by the fact that Megara fell into oblivion upon her arrival. She would inevitably ask awkward questions and had a penchant for not understanding the basic necessities of double dealing. My fourth-born arrived swiftly and had evidently not dressed for the occasion. It seemed that he had dropped what he was doing, in this case; having lunch, and responded to my summons immediately despite the fresh blood stains across his tunic. "Sire." He knelt at the edge of the dais and would remain there all night until I bid him approach.

"You did not think to dress, Rahab?" I asked, wryly.

He remained unfazed, "you said immediately."

I chuckled, I had at that. "Come," I gestured and we retired to my chambers, to the room that had long stood unused; the one that had acted as our war room as we tied up the loose ends of the empire and brought the last, remnant humans to heel. The map of Nosgoth marking out my sons territories still remained, though I was bemused to see that even that had changed over the years. Rahab obviously noticed the same and set to redifining the borders, moving the wooden flags around the map as though this were but a game.

I studied the map, taking in the nuances of the lands; the swamps, inlets and rivers that had once impeded our progress and allowed the humans to take refuge in makeshift settlements that provided them little protection from the elements, let alone our forces. "For this exercise I will require you to speak plainly, do you understand?" I asked my son. He nodded, though I doubt it would have occurred to him to have lied or softened his words. "Where would you say are the most dissatisfied humans living?"

He looked to the map, studying every inch of it and took a time before replying. "It is difficult," he muttered, "the most rebellious human elements have been drawn to Zephonim to these rumours that the humans there are building something."

"Poor fools. I can just imagine your brother putting about these rumours just to draw more slaves to him only to be killed on the doorstep."

"He lets them in," Rahab said, quietly, "the humans are the only ones he does let in. It is only vampires who get turned away or worse at his gates."

I raised an eyebrow but did not press the issue, we could be here for the remainder of the century and the next debating what exactly was going on in Zephonim. "Regardless," he continued, marking a number of villages and towns across the map, "I would say all of the fringe settlements would be happy to see us fall. They've spent so long running their own affairs nominally beyond our reach, the fact that we can now garrison them like any other town has probably rankled. That and the fledglings have a lot to learn about courtesy," he grumbled.

I chuckled, Rahab was the keenest of my offspring to practice generosity when it came to his human servants and slaves. He had long been considered the softest touch among his brothers, until it emerged that those of his brood that were not so civil to the humans had been punished swiftly and with a degree of harshness that had left is in no doubt of his mettle. On one occasion a group of sorry fledglings had been taken to the coast and lashed to a cliff face, just high enough to escape the tide but low enough to be endlessly sprayed by the waves as the broke against the stone. It was not for love of the humans that he maintained such merciless order. Rahab had taken for his home the wettest lands of Nosgoth and in the early days there had been numerous "accidents" where a lone vampire somehow slipped into a lake or a river. Such accidents could only be mitigated by a polite understanding with the herd; that they would remain unmolested for as long as Rahab did. It seemed to be working well for them. "Aside from that, I would say Dorsleun and Steudach, both of Turelim. I have heard rumours that they are not best pleased about the lack of sun and what it's done to their fields. Elzet in Melchium is usually the first to decry us given the weaknesses of their masters and Waterlan in my own realm.

"Yours?" I was surprised to find him name an entire hamlet of his own as having rebellious views.

He shrugged it off, "Waterlan is right beside a lake. Mine have never been particularly enthusiastic to go there and so they have a certain degree of autonomy given our natural fear of the mere. Such independence gives rise to dissenting talk; nothing particularly original, just the usual 'we could drive them back' pipe dreams. They have been muttering such things since the town was built but they have yet to so much as cuss us to our face. All talk, much like the others."

I looked at the map, studying the locations he had pointed out to me, "and do you think if given the chance to mount an actual, legitimate resistance against us they would take it?"

If he was surprised by my question, Rahab did not show it, "they might. I think it would depend on the kind of resistance. They are none of them stupid enough to take up arms against us."

"Perhaps a new settlement, fortified against us from which they would have to do very little save exist?" I suggested, "they have always lended themselves well to passive counteraction rather than direct conflict. If we could provide them with an area easily defendable and naturally fortified against us, somewhere near a body of water or perhaps so far above-"

"There was the citadel," Rahab said, suddenly, his eyes darting over the map, "do you remember?" he asked, "it was one of the last structures to fall before Avernus. The humans retreated into it and tried to keep us at bay. Raziel and his firstborn took it but there actually weren't all that many humans in it and it was so out of the way we did not return to it." He pointed to an area north of the abyss that had largely been absorbed into the Razielim borders, "in the mountains," he said, "I'm sure it was around here, somewhere."

His words stirred a memory in me. I remembered Raziel and what little he had for a clan at the time venturing into the mountains, rooting out those who had sought to flee from us in the unavigable cliffs before they could retreat into the hills completely and disappear from our realm. "Shall we see what remains?" I asked. If he had any misgivings regarding our conversation, or if he disapproved of the implications which I had trusted he had grasped, he did not show them. In fact he was content to follow me out of the sanctuary, begging my pardon just the once to finally change into something more suitable.