Life may have carried on, but it was forever changed by the loss of the Razielim. Nobody spoke of them. A wall of silence surrounded their very existence. And yet, this silence only served to make us acutely aware of them, more so even than when they had lived. Their lands remained unclaimed - forever a deserted ruin, even though there was a time when my brothers would have fought tooth and nail to have marked even the smallest part of Raziel's territory. But nobody would venture near it. It served as a constant reminder of our own fragility; we had thought ourselves Gods and yet we all existed on the whim of my lord. When we had need to travel we would pointedly avoid anything that might have felt Raziel's touch, without ever voicing that this would be the case. The silence that surrounded the Razielim extended to every possibly reference that they had ever been. Even their banners remained about the place, nobody wanting to remove them, as though touching them were to be an acknowledgement too far.
For my own part I ventured back that way but a handful of times. Each time it became harder and harder to do so, until eventually, I simply stopped going, feeling as though I had committed a betrayal every day that I did not return. Of course, the cataclysms and earthquakes that continued to rock the land provided a convenient excuse. The roads were becoming unusable, and it was easy to blame the wrecked pathways to account for the large and vacant territory so close to the sanctuary.
That said, much of the land seemed to become vacant and empty; the empire now a shadow of it's former self. The quakes ensured the destruction of the smaller villages, forcing everyone into the larger cities and capitals. A great number of humans took advantage of the confusion to escape to the human fortress in the mountains, though they thankfully had the good sense to breed and a lack of sense to stay put. Many a time we found some young adventurer out to see the world, wondering if the vampires were really as bad as their parents and grandparents suggested. They learned we were.
Far more amusing were those who had heard the stories and sought us out to revere and worship us. There was great amusement to be had at the idea of a generation of slaves escaping, only for their children to return as our most devout followers. That is not to say they did not annoy the hell out of most of us. You could not look at them without them dropping to their knees and raising their arms in awestruck prostration. The first time my lord and I encountered one we had been doing nothing more deific than walking, and yet a young man still saw fit to throw himself down shouting, "hail!" his arms outstretched, as though embracing our radiant benevolence. My lord and I had stopped in our tracks, stared first at the man, then at each other before we both laughed aloud. We had lived more than a millennia, and yet I do believe that youth was the most ridiculous thing we had ever encountered. Even our most faithful and long serving servants thought them ridiculous. Afterwards I realised it had been the first time I had laughed since I had said goodbye to Azrael, seemingly a lifetime ago.
Things seemed...lighter after that. I realised I could laugh again, and the darkness that had shrouded me since my premature waking began to lift. It would never leave me completely; my constant companion for all times, but I learned at least to live with it. And in turn I noticed, for the first time, that that was exactly what everyone around me was trying to do. There were those who jumped every time they heard footsteps approaching, struggling to let go of the fear. There were those who laughed a little too loudly at every minor amusement, determined to show that they were not afraid, and, like me, there were those who walked with an air of sadness, mourning lost friends, not to mention their own self confidence. Gradually, all of these would disappear as they hardened their hearts against the past. The Razielim would come to be resented; remembered as traitors and heretics, seen to have received their just rewards for their betrayal. It was easier to hate them after all, than live with the guilt that we had destroyed them. But for the moment, I took heart that I would not feel wretched forever, or at least, I would feel less wretched than I had upon my first visit to Azrael's quarters. And I as I learned to laugh again, I noticed the relief in my lord. It was as though he had been holding his breath, waiting for me to recover, and now that I had shown the first signs, he had allowed himself to breathe again.
It was some weeks after that first laugh that I was woken from what interrupted and fragmented sleep I had managed to garner, by an unholy cacaphony of hammering and banging that echoed around the sancturary's stone walls. As I yelled for my steward, shouting, "what in the name of Kain is that racket?!" I realised that I finally felt like my old, belligerent self, the grief of the last few years ever present, but not quite touching me anymore.
My steward hastened in, recoiling from my anger, a far cry from the melancholic irritability of late, "it is lord Kain's alterations, my lady," he said, breathlessly, speaking loudly to be overheard over the methodical crashes.
"Alterations?"
"...to the sanctuary..." I saw him visibly bite down his, 'were you not informed?' Rolling my eyes I went in search of my lord.
Unsurprisingly he was at the source of the commotion, indeed, he was overseeing it. The hallway beyond the throne room was filled with Turelim architects, directing builders as they hammered and chiseled huge chunks of stone from the floor, under my lord's direction.
"Good morning, Megara," he called, cheerfully, as I squeezed past the workmen and their tools. "Forgive me if we disturbed you."
"Disturbed me?" I called, loudly over a fresh bout of hammering, "I fear you are in danger of rousing the dead. What's going on?"
My lord was smiling at me, almost teasingly; a welcome sight after we had spent so long in melancholic silence. "Some alterations I feel are necessary," he shouted, "though I had not counted on quite this much noise."
The hammering stopped as my lord spoke, causing him to finish shouting over the sudden silence. He gave a short chuckle at himself, repeated by those around us.
"Why was I not informed?" I asked, curiously, with no hint of affront in my tone.
My lord did not have the courtesy to pretend he needed time to think on the answer, "because you would have argued against it," he said, simply.
I glanced around us, puzzled, wondering why I should take exception to building work. The Turelim were measuring out indentations in the ground and it struck me that these alterations had not been included in the plans my lord had revealed to myself and Raziel some decades prior. Indeed, those plans would never see implementation let alone completion. Since Raziel had left us it seemed my lord had lost all fervour for restoring the sanctuary, allowing it to fall further into disrepair, aided by the frequent cataclysms.
I was still considering the situation when one of the Turelim called over to my lord, "we'll have to lie new stone, sire. The current floor is too cracked, it won't hold the water."
My head jerked up, as though I'd been struck, "water?" I said, an edge creeping into my voice. My lord still looked amused. "You want to bring water inside the sanctuary? Have you gone insane?!"
My lord exchanged a bemused glance with the Turelim foreman, "did I not say she would react exactly thus?" he said, cheerily, "thank you Meg for confirming I was indeed right not to tell you."
"Water? In the sanctuary. Inside?! What madness has possessed you to wake up and think, oh I know what the sanctuary needs? A water feature! We clearly don't have enough accidental death about the place..."
His hand raised and my tirade ceased immediately, though I had to bite my tongue to do so. "It is for your brother's benefit."
Of course he must have meant Rahab who had long implemented similar pools in his own territory, and received a wide berth from everyone as a result. Yet that did not stop me muttering, "well, it'll save us a walk to the abyss at any rate."
I caught myself, stunned for a moment that I had been so comfortable to make such a joke. Even more surprising were the rumbling chuckles it was greeted with. Any reply my lord might make was drowned out by the resumption of hammering as the Turelim made headway into the stone. My lord gestured that we should retreat, but no matter where we paused the sound followed us.
"Oh this won't get tiresome at all," I grumbled from within his chambers. "I was just thinking that I get too much rest anyway..." at that he put his hand over mine and for a moment he looked stricken. He always did when reminded that we suffered so and had done since he had discovered this unforeseen aspect of Raziel's execution.
I fell silent, guilty for reminding him, and he continued, gently, "I had thought we might go and pay a visit to your brothers, until the work was completed."
"We?" I raised an eyebrow.
My lord failed to fight back a smirk, "I had thought about sending you alone but that smacked of exile. Besides," he added, suddenly serious," I would miss your company."
I stared at him and laughed, but he did not smile, "you're...serious?"
I had not thought myself good company of late. Aside from the obvious; I was miserable for a lack of confidante and I missed my lover. Not to mention short tempered and irritable from a lack of rest. We needed little to no sleep and yet the fact that we could not find even brief respite was having an effect on us all, save my lord who found rest as easily as he ever had and was not plagued by the torment of his eldest son. Not his screams at any rate. Yet here he was, smiling at me, almost affectionately, "your presence, as always, is a great comfort to me."
Silence stretched out between us, it was not like him to be sentimental, and I was unsure how to respond. "Right," I said, eventually, when I realised he was expecting a response, "well...thank you, I suppose."
He laughed and reached out to muss my hair. Had I not known better I might have thought him dying. Two affectionate gestures in as many minutes? Definitely dying.
We planned our journey, noteworthy in itself that we did not simply up and leave. Also intriguing was the way in which my lord planned out our route rather than arranging a rendezvous at the nearest capital. He intended a scenic route and I realised that this was his intention all along, though he would not voice it. We had long received reports of the clans retreating into themselves, of entire towns and villages decimated by the quakes or starved by a lack of cattle. From the way in which my lord cast his eye over the map before us I saw that he wanted to take in our new situation. The work outside the throne room was but a convenient excuse to have us prevail on the hospitality of my brethren.
Time was we would have simply saddled the horses and rode off, but the land had been unable to sustain such beasts for an age. So we would largely walk, or at least that was the plan until we reached the main hall and looking out saw threatening clouds even behind the smog.
"Looks like rain my lord," called a sentry, already ushering his men inside so that they would not get caught in the downpour that threatened.
"Perhaps we will forego the first leg of our journey?" my lord mused, "and we shall meet at Melchahim?"
I glanced up at the dark fog overhead, a distant low rumble heralding an oncoming storm and wondered, idly, if my lord's bar form could withstand the rain.
