Return to Meridian

Disclaimer: Legacy of Kain belongs to Edios and Crystal Dynamics, not me. I am making £0.00 out of this fic, it is written purely because I have a burning need to create. Although I would like to own Vorador . . . then he'd be mine.

Rating: PG-13

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Chapter Two

The flight back to Meridian was more arduous than expected.

While he'd rested on the ship, a storm had billowed up. He'd waited out the worst of it for two days, but once again his impatience led him to make hasty decisions and he'd taken to the wing when the wind was still unreasonably strong, though the rain had stopped.

He arrived on the Meridian docks, flustered and almost as tired as he had been before his two days enforced rest. All combined, this did not put him in a positive frame of mind.

The Reaver hummed on his back, a comfort despite everything. The presence of the sword brought a sense of security that he had lacked while walking the city alone. It was like having a friend at his back after a long absence. It eased his mood slightly as he walked through the city towards Sanctuary.

The city itself was quiet. He had expected at least an undercurrent of tension, given that the Serefan Lord had fallen. But then how would the people here know, the only person capable of traveling faster than he was Vorador, who he assumed Janos had teleported back to Sanctuary.

Word obviously hadn't reached them yet.

Kain couldn't help but feel a small spark of excitement at getting to watch front the front, the absolute panic that would befall the Serefan in the power vacuum.

His improving mood was, however, stunted when he reached the Lower city.

There was a distinct feeling of excitement here. People crowded the streets, huddling in groups and whispering. The Serefan was nowhere to be seen, at least not until he got closer to Sanctuary. The crowds grew thinner as he approached and the guards became more numerous and far better equipped than those this area of the city usually boasted. Something big was happening, and Kain was all too sure he knew what it was.

The Serefan had found them.

How in the hell had they managed that?

Perhaps Umah truly had been a spy?

He took to the rooftops as he got closer to the Blue Lady shop. Smoke plumed into the air and the stink of burning permeated everything. The Serefan had pulled no punches here. This was not an attempt to capture prisoners, this was an extermination.

The end of one.

He'd arrived too late to stop anything. From the look of the shop, they had started the fire yesterday, at least. The shop was a shell of its former self. The Serefan crowded around the ruins, but their body language was lazy and relaxed. They weren't expecting any more survivors to come bursting out of the ruin. They were likely waiting for the fire to be completely out before confirming that nothing living or dead was within.

Kain had no way of knowing if the vampires within had escaped or not. Vampire bodies aren't exactly easy to spot in a building all but burnt to ash. The best he could do here would be to educate the Serefan on the folly of their actions. For while he felt no great love for those who dwelt within Sanctuary, it would do no good to have the humans think they could burn Vampire strongholds as they liked without consequence.

So Reaver in hand, he dropped from the roof.

To say it surprised the Serefan on the ground when he fell amongst them would be an understatement. But it did not surprise them for long. Their unprepared state, coupled with his anger and the Reaver blade, meant they were cut down quickly. He had to admit; he enjoyed the slaughter. Even the heavily armoured and glyph powered soldiers fell easily. The reaver tore them asunder in as little as two or three blows. He had missed this.

When the last of them fell, Kain approached the ruin. The building had collapsed during the fire and there was no clear way down to the underground segment now. He could hear nothing from the ruin that might show someone trapped within. The building was silent save from the soft sound of smouldering embers.

The vampires were gone.

Either dead or escaped. He had no way of knowing.

Shit.

Kain spent the rest of the night wandering the rooftops, back alleys and sewers, keeping his ears open and his nose to the ground. He revisited the human contacts he'd encountered during the endless night. But nothing turned up any sign of information that the inhabitants of the Blue Lady shop had survived.

Vorador couldn't have been destroyed by something so simple as a raid, though. But that being said, he had been wounded, so maybe... But no, Vorador had been too angry to be killed, angry at Kain for the death of Umah. The two had been a hair's breath from coming to blows prior to the Serefan Lord's interruption. So no, Vorador wouldn't fall to a simple raid, not before he'd screamed at him some more.

Likely then that Vorador had fled the Sanctuary and taken his small brood with him, intending to hide until they became desperate enough to need his help again. Kain thought for a moment about following the likely path out of the city they might have taken, but decided against it. Vorador was either dead, or he was sulking, and neither sounded like they were worth his time.

The thought of them becoming a threat surfaced quietly in his mind. Umah had feared he would see them as such before she took the Nexus Stone from him. She had prophesied that he would hunt them all down and kill them, much in the same manner as the Serefan Lord.

Realistically, the only threat to him from the other vampires was Vorador, and he was confident enough that he could take the elder in a straight fight. Vorador had age on his side, but Kain had brute strength and the strange ability to somehow not die no matter what they threw at him.

So not, he would not hunt them. Not yet. Not unless they forced his hand.

Meridian was still the hub of the Serefan. He could spend some time here, thinning out their ranks, perhaps infiltrating some strongholds and tearing them down from within. It would be a worthwhile use of his time until he thought of something better. Or a better opportunity made itself known.

Decision made, he set about finding himself somewhere to serve as a home, however temporary. Trying to ignore the memory of Umah's death and his own words afterwards.

He truly had been left alone.

End

Authoress Note: Thank you for reading, please comment/review, I'd love to hear what you think.

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