Infinite Impossibilities
Part 1
Raziel clung to himself and squeezed his eyes shut tighter, trying to swallow the burning lump in his throat. He had lain like this for hours, or days, millennia. It didn't matter; all time became an endless parade of blackness and pain.
Very slowly Raziel realised that he was becoming aware of his surroundings. He was not, as he had previously thought, free-floating in the endless sea of the Abyss. He lay spread-eagled on his back on a hard, black obsidian floor, gazing up at a ceiling too high to contemplate. Obsidian ornamentation covered the otherwise plain black walls, etchings in a language he didn't comprehend scrawled their way around them.
Exerting a great effort to raise himself with both hands, Raziel the Fallen sat up and put one clawed hand to his forehead, eyes shut. Finally he brought himself to study his impossibly changed body. His skin, once a vision in marble, was a deep blue, and he soon discovered that his lower jaw had been rent from him completely. Bone and muscle and flesh had seemingly melded into some new, tougher substance, though his ribs and spine remained largely exposed. After studying himself for an unknown amount of time, Raziel steeled himself, a set determination in his eyes, and stood up. Picking up the remnants of his banner-like cloak, he slung it over his shoulders, partially covering his scarred face, and started to walk towards a large, dark opening in one of the obsidian walls.
*
This place is quite obviously deep underground, thought Raziel, taking in his surroundings as he continued to walk on silent feet along a gently winding corridor. Ahead of him he could make out a gently throbbing red light seeping from a small doorway. He slowed his pace, warily bending slightly to see into the room before he entered. The red light threw a strange cast on everything in the surprisingly small, low-ceilinged room. Raziel stepped inside and was struck by the silence that was latent in the air of this confined space. The light had no apparent source, so Raziel began to study the walls once more. They were made of the same smooth, almost reflective obsidian, and there were inscriptions and drawings covering the entire surface. He traced a claw over a short sequence of pictures, showing various beings in torment and chaos, and one solid, unchanging figure always standing over them in the background, ever-present in a world full of malice and confusion. He frowned, moving onto the next wall.
"Im glad you appreciate my saga." A deceptively soft voice came from behind Raziel. He spun around, feet spread solidly, ready to fight. A vaguely humanoid shape of projected red light spread across the whole wall. Raziel lowered his hands slightly.
"Who are you? Where am I?" He asked, finding he could easily speak even without the use of his lower jaw. The figure appeared to shake slightly, in laughter or perhaps simply because of its flimsy projection.
"You are in my domain." It simply said. "I have summoned you here from your eternal torment in the abyss to offer you a choice." The voice resonated around the small room. Raziel raised one eyebrow in a quizzical look, and finally abandoned his defensive stance.
"What kind of choice." He said. "Torment me not with false promises, whatever you are. Send me back to my peaceful, everlasting death."
The red light figure grew immensely, seemingly filling the entire room with its presence. It towered over Raziel, and he took a step back instinctively.
"I admire your spirit, Raziel." It intoned. "But, know that though I offer you a choice to be made of your own free will, your fate is pre-ordained."
Raziel laughed bitterly. "Then what kind of choice is it you offer me, that I may make of free will and yet be guided in my decision by cruel destiny?" he asked. The being remained silent for a moment, and then shrunk slightly, back to its original size. The high pressure in the small room abated slightly.
"It is a simple choice, Raziel. I am offering you the chance to create an entirely new, parallel yet ultimately different destiny than the one that you are already hurtling towards." The voice paused, as if taking breath. "Become my agent, Raziel." The voice was deep and clipped, and the silence that followed rung in Raziel's ears in the small room. "Become my Angel of Death, my… Soul Reaver, and avert the course that history is forcing you to take which will only lead in inevitable death."
Raziel frowned again, serious questions nagging at him that he felt were better not to ask at the present moment. He waited for the being to continue.
"Even now you try to redeem yourself in your head for your betrayal of your brethren." The voice said solemnly, and then broke into sudden, chilling laughter. "There is no need for you to create a fiction of your own righteousness for your personal use!"
Raziel clenched his fists and raised one of them at the red light being.
"My brethren suffered no betrayal from mine own hands!" He exclaimed loudly. "I was the one who suffered at their unmerciful hands for a crime with went uncommitted." The red light being continued to chuckle softly.
"I find it highly amusing how you have deluded yourself into thinking, in those many eons you cowered in the "Abyss", oblivious to all around you, that you are some kind of martyr!" The projection shook with violent laughter. "Very well. I shall grace you with the story of your own history, which you have neatly erased from your mind while you basked in insanity. Do you not remember wreaking an arcane contract with a bloodthirsty spirit that if you slaughtered huge ranks of your vampire kinsmen to fuel the needs of this spirit, that you would be granted power over your equals?" The being appeared to be regarding Raziel with amusement as he stumbled back against the obsidian wall opposite the projection, eyes wild.
"Do you not remember massacring your brothers in the name of this nameless spirit, and revelling in the power it fed to you? Do you not remember Kain, your sire, finding you drinking the blood of one of your own brothers, and in deep pity, not ordering the execution of his first-born, but ordering your confinement? Have you forgotten the millennia you spent chained to the pillars of Nosgoth, under constant solemn watch by your kin, while you raved and slowly drove yourself insane?" The voice trailed off, leaving Raziel taking ragged breaths as he pressed himself up against the wall, shaking his head.
"No, you lie… I was outcast for being favoured; Kain was jealous-" he broke off, inhaling loudly. The voice was silent, though Raziel could see it shaking in silent laughter.
"Become mine, Raziel, lest you take up the path your destiny is painting for you and Kain slays you in the name of all things holy."
Raziel took another deep breath, and stepped forward again, regaining his composure as much as he found possible.
"What is it that you wish me to do?" he asked warily.
"You will slay Kain and restore balance to the world. My balance." Raziel inclined his head slightly. 'My' balance? He thought.
"I see you will need some educating. Right at this very moment, my peer, my most hated other half, speaks unto Kain as I speak unto you. Kain is assuming his destined role as the guardian of balance in the name of my other half. You will assume the role of my Soul Reaver, and you shall put Kain back in his place and restore Nosgoth and its inhabitants to their rightful role, as the purveyors of evil! The Kindred have long slipped in their duties; they have grown negligent of their origins and purposes. Kain is the culmination of millennia of tampering by my other half. Vampires doing things in the name of nobility and balance, indeed!" The voice grew louder and louder, and Raziel was forced to clamp his hands over his ears as the resonating voice boomed in the tiny room. He screwed his eyes shut in an attempt to evade the towering animosity emanating from this projection. The voice paused, and continued in a quieter and more composed tone.
"The Kindred are not elements of order and neutrality. They are my children, children of chaos and disorder, of evil and power. My other half has tampered long enough, and has corrupted my children of chaos. I did not intend them to exist in harmony with all, for harmony to exist there must also be chaos and corruption." The voice seemed to sigh. "And so, Raziel, wilt thou take up the gauntlet?"
Raziel put a hand to his forehead and closed his eyes again. This was too much to take, he needed time to process everything this being was trying to tell him.
"DOST THOU ACCEPT THY DESTINY, RAZIEL!" The voice thundered, the force throwing Raziel against the wall. He crumpled to the ground and pushed himself up, trembling, with both hands. He no longer cared for anything, and turning back to the projection, eyes blazing red in the light, he ripped his makeshift cloak from his body and tossed it on the floor.
"I accept." He said, and the projection vanished, plunging Raziel into utter darkness.