Infinite Impossibilities
Part 2
Raziel came to in a dimly lit chamber that he didn't recognise. The walls were not of the obsidian to which he had grown accustomed, but instead they were of a dark, translucent glass. Etchings roved across the walls and ceiling as they had done in the other rooms Raziel had studied before his meeting with the red light being, some detailed depictions of demonic angels, and some simply scrawls in an incoherent tongue.
After studying his environment, Raziel moved to get up and find a way out of this room. However, he found that his arms and legs were bound in the same smoky glass material that the walls were constructed from. He struggled for a minute or two, but soon discovered that he was wasting his energy. The glass bindings locked his hands behind his back and his feet to the floor in front of him, rendering him helpless.
In the half-darkness, Raziel reflected on all that the being had told him. He was so utterly familiar with what he had up until now known was his past history, but now he wasn't so convinced. The more he thought about it, snatches of conversation and split-second still images surfaced in his memory, or what he believed to be his memory. Raziel shook his head violently to try and dislodge the images flooding him, not knowing who or what to believe.
A snatch of conversation.
"I will not have him live among us! He is an outcast, no longer one of our kind."
"And I will not have my first-born lieutenant cast into the Abyss!"
"He is deluded, he killed scores of his own kind and drank their blood!"
"Confine him to the pillars. I shall personally watch over him day and night, but I shall not have him slain."
An image, a badly lit sketch of a life which may or may not have come to pass. Raziel, crouched over a fallen Vampire wearing the mark of the Razielim. Raziel, holding the Kindred up by a fistful of cloak, one clawed hand suspended in midair, poised to deliver the fatal blow. A trickle of dark blood traces a line from the corner of Raziel's mouth to his chin.
Raziel closed his eyes, instinctively trying to raise his hands to cover his face, willing the image to go away. His body convulsed at the thought of drinking his brother's blood, and he took deep breaths to calm himself. For an indeterminable amount of time he sat in the near-darkness, staring at the wall opposite him, until his sharp ears picked up a sound nearby. Her struggled to turn around, twisting his neck as far as possible. But this time the voice came from in front of him.
"Its time for you to assume your role, Raziel."
Raziel's head snapped around to look for the source of the voice, and this time it was no mere projection. A dark figure, immense and solid, stood some way off towards the far wall. Raziel recognised the figure from the images he had inspected on the wall of the small room where he accepted his destiny – the immovable and ageless solemn figure which stood observing what Raziel now knew to be his children's work.
Raziel struggled once more with his bindings, and he was suddenly released from them. Standing up he brushed himself off and took a few steps towards the dark figure. Before he was halfway across the room, he was stopped in his tracks by an unseen force. Involuntarily, his arms extended and his feet were drawn together as if in a morbid parody of a crucifixion.
Suddenly a thirst hit Raziel like one he'd never experienced before. His whole body was aflame with it, burning white hot in his mind's eye. He threw back his head, eyes closed, trying to think of something other than the blinding pain.
"And now art thou awakened." The voice intoned once again using that archaic speech. All of a sudden Raziel was released by the force which held him, and he collapsed to the cold glass floor, choking and gasping for breath.
"What...What have you done to me?" He bit out, head in his hands.
"I have simply altered your tastes to something more fitting for the services you will be performing." The voice answered. "You no longer have the lust or the need for blood as you have always known. Your being is elevated, but in that state you need something more substantial to sustain your ethereal body. Now must you gorge yourself on the souls of others, and they will strengthen you beyond your physical limits."
Raziel pushed himself back up and held out his clawed hands in front of him. He regarded them for a moment and then let them drop to his sides as his gaze slid up to regard the figure.
"You know your purpose." Were the only words the figure had for the Fallen Raziel. The figure remained cold and silent as Raziel steeled himself and pushed past it, striding out into the corridor beyond.
The faint light of the room ahead beckoned to Raziel, and he swept into it with resolve. A lone soul, shrieking soundlessly, trailed around the room. Raziel instinctively set his feet slightly apart, and willed the soul towards him. He devoured it without knowing how, a strange inhalation full of promise. He realised that he didn't feel as shaky now, and glanced around the room. Various pieces of armour were hanging from the walls or standing on racks. After a quick glance, Raziel selected some rudimentary pieces and threw them on before sweeping out of the room and onwards, towards the pillars where he was confined for so long.
Pausing at an intersection, Raziel closed his eyes, brushing his hair back absently with one hand.
A snippet of conversation.
"Cast him in."
An image, of crystal clarity, and then gone in a flash. Raziel, suspended unconscious by two of his Kindred, being roughly dragged to the edge of the Abyss, Kain standing by, watching with a suppressed smile of triumph on his scarred face.
Raziel spun around, eyes flashing with anger. But before he could stride back to the domain of the figure and the voice, all-new purpose came to him and he remembered that they were false memories conjured up by the delirium that he himself had immersed himself in to escape from the bleak reality.
Clenching his clawed fists tightly, Raziel set his face in an expression of fierce determination, and began his silent march towards the pillars of Nosgoth, and his awaiting destiny.