An argument instantly erupted amongst the remaining members of the Clan.
Opinion was highly divided - some thought their Lord had teleported to
another location, others that he had been spirited away by some unknown
force in an attempt to keep him from restoring the Pillars; still others
were of the view that he had voluntarily entered the time-stream. As they
had no full grasp of their Lord's abilities since his defeat of his
brother, any one of these opinions seemed equally valid. Freya, on the
other hand, had seen this particular phenomenon on three occasions already
and was left in no doubt as to its meaning. In a flash, she remembered the
texts - she now had their location, and if, as she had always believed,
they did hold the secret to travelling between Earth and Nosgoth, they now
constituted the Clan's best chance of finding Raziel.
Seeing that there was no chance of interrupting the heated dispute that had broken out between the other nine, Freya turned to the Elite next to her as she began to run, her revelation spilling out as the mystery unravelled, "He hasn't gone time-streaming - he's gone world-hopping."
The vampire watched her departure in bemusement.
A half hour and a brief tussle with a rusted lever later, Freya descended cautiously into the vault below Kain's throne. As she progressed, she used the torch she had found outside to light the oil-filled braziers that constituted the room's light sources. She recoiled as the illumination revealed grisly trophies of Kain's victories, her expression shortly changing to one of wonder as she beheld the true scope of the chamber and the veritable hoard contained therein. Unsure as to where to look first, she moved towards the back of the room in order to begin a methodical search. Although the task was onerous, her resolve was strengthened by the thought that, in finding the documents, not only might she be able to help the Razielim, but she would at long last complete the quest that had led her through so many adventures. Her searching gaze alit almost immediately on a most incongruous-looking stone sarcophagus in the corner of the room, whose heavy lid eventually clattered to the floor to reveal none other than the long-sought-after Sarafan documents. With a wild grin of elation and a gleeful chuckle, she began to extract them.
Isca, meanwhile, had endeavoured to take control once again, and was currently barking orders right left and centre, trying to assess what just happened. Having coerced his men into some semblance of calm, he realised belatedly that Freya was also missing. He gave an exasperated sigh before asking if anyone had noticed where the woman had gone. When her parting words were passed to him by the guard who saw her leave, Isca, by dint of some insightful deductive reasoning, guessed her intentions. With a look of absolute terror on his face, he abandoned his men and raced off in the direction of the Sanctuary, knowing that she had gone to attempt to reclaim the texts, and praying to whatever Gods might still remain that he would get there in time.
He knew what guarded the vault.
In the musty gloom of Kain's treasure chamber, a hissing, slithering sound caused Freya to freeze in her rummaging and glance behind her. The room remained devoid of life - no doubt her presence had disturbed the centuries of dust that lay like a silken shroud over the Master Vampire's possessions. She returned to her examination of the multitude of leather- bound books and yellowed, crinkled papers only to find the sound was repeated. Putting down the sheaf she was holding, she freed her katana from its restraint and turned to appraise the room anew. The sound continued to echo from the lofty walls, the resonance disguising its source, and inducing the woman to stalk back down the main pathway to track down the cause. Before long, the sound reached a crescendo, bringing her to a halt at an archway flanked by two large chests, its depths lost in shadow. As she peered into the unfathomable blackness, something stirred within, and a weighty dragging sound accompanied the emergence into the light of a sight that made Freya's blood run cold.
The creature that dragged itself into the wan torchlight was as something from a fevered dream. That it had once been humanoid was probable, but far from certain: though it was bipedal, it seemed to have acquired a few extra limbs around its upper body in addition to the usual pair of arms. These appendages rose behind it in a blatant display of aggression, vicious, wedge-shaped stabbing claws adorning each extremity. Aside from these characteristics, the creature had obviously suffered much to become as it was: every joint on its entire form had been bent backwards ninety degrees in the wrong direction, the tendons and sinews holding the limbs stretched almost to snapping point. Worse still, the hapless beast's internal organs had been forced to the outside, each ruddy sac bloated and glistening and oozing odious sludge.
Freya needed little time to recognise that this was Kain's handiwork. Not only did this fit in perfectly with the characteristics of his final Dark Gift, but it was typical of the callous vampire master to have made the creature undead before consigning it to eternities of pain. The monster's face evinced its interminable and constant suffering, and it shortly became apparent in a moment that Freya would dearly have loved to forget, that the creature had retained its hold on life only by feeding on itself. A foul, phlegmy sound now caught her ear, and the woman realised in a second of awful clarity that it was attempting to speak. As the wasted vocal chords that had formed no word in the long aeons since Kain's damnation began to reverberate, Freya understood what the beast was trying to say:
"P'ramma."
There was now no way to prevent the knowledge from flooding into her consciousness, and as she looked closely at the ravaged, scarred face that rode atop the hideously elongated neck, the identity of the creature became undeniably clear.
"Antaris!"
Despite her horror and revulsion, Freya found she still felt pity for her one-time nemesis, abandoned here for who knew how many centuries in unimaginable agony, consigned to self-consumption in order to survive: no enemy deserved that. With a half-formed idea that she might try to mend the age-old rift between herself and the former Sarafan Lord, Freya lowered her weapon in a gesture of truce.
The creature seemed to relax somewhat, its fearsome appendages sinking towards the ground as it seemed to sense her intentions. Freya nodded slowly, keeping her eyes locked on the glittering black orbs that seemed to have been piled haphazardly onto the elongated face. Suddenly, the sharp- toothed jaw broke into a grotesque imitation of a grin as, in a movement too fast for the human eye to perceive, Antaris stabbed at her with two of his razor-sharp appendages, the first shearing straight through her shoulder and the other partially penetrating the right side of her abdomen. Too shocked even to scream, Freya found herself lifted aloft and pulled closer to the beast's drooling maw until their faces were inches apart. With a grimace of repulsion and pain, she summoned what strength remained in her and drove the Dark Angel straight into the monstrosity's chest. Enraged, and with no apparent ill-effects from her attempted impalement, Antaris slammed the woman into the ground with a satisfying crunch. Astounded by the creature's survival of her attack, Freya soon became aware that the demonic hilt of her sword was pressing ever closer to her own chest. Even worse, she found that Antaris was dribbling on her, and with a lascivious flick of his distended, putrescent tongue, he hissed,
"Just where I always wanted you."
Turning her head to avoid the putrid stench that issued from the horror's twisted mouth, she realised she must either act now or be crushed by the downwards pressure of her own weapon. With regret foremost in her mind, she began to force the hilt of the katana to the right, driving the tempered steel past its breaking point until it gave with a metallic snapping sound that echoed the heartbreak she felt at the demise of her staunch ally. With the upper half of the sword free, she tugged it out of the way and, with a scream of pain as the spined claw embedded in her upper body tore at the muscles she had no choice but to use, she drove the remains of the sword into the misshapen beast's brain. With an almighty roar, Antaris raised himself to his hind legs, his head colliding with the vaulted ceiling, his death throes freeing the woman from his penetrating grip. With a final cry that spoke more of release than fear, the foul thing that had once been a Sarafan warrior collapsed dead before the entrance to Kain's vault.
As the light faded from Antaris' tortured eyes, Freya looked down at her own wounds: the tear in her shoulder, although the claw had passed straight through, was likely not fatal, but the gaping hole in her lower abdomen did not bode well. She was frequently surprised at how much blood the human body could hold. With a grim smile, she accepted her fate, and, knowing that her remaining time could probably be counted in minutes, she began to drag herself towards the opened sarcophagus.
With one hand holding her innards in, she began to rifle through the papers. To her complete astonishment, she found the majority of them were written in Spanish. As she glanced distractedly at page after page of the yellowed texts, she found a wide diversity of information, ranging from ancient Sarafan battle plans to song lyrics that she recognised. Freya began to wonder if her mind had gone. Pushing the papers to one side, she dug through the dusty tomes, her attention eventually caught by an incongruous blue notebook with a logo on the cover which was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, not from Nosgoth. Consumed with curiosity despite the growing pain of her wounds, she began to read.
The first few pages read as an introduction to the owner of the notebook. The majority of its contents were also in Spanish, except for a small number of words which, in common with all true bilingual societies, were often written in the dominant language. With her knowledge of linguistics it was easy for her to see how the three repeated phrases; "Gaming guide", "Release Date" and "Programmer" had through centuries of oral corruption and consonantal drift been changed to "Gaminged", Relstadt" and "P'ramma".
She had at long last found the basis for the Sarafan prophecies, and the dying woman uttered an exhausted laugh at the irony of the revelation, an act which caused her to cough up a handful of some black, tarry substance. Freya continued to read in the time she had left to her.
A heavy pounding began at the far end of the room as a mighty shoulder was set forcedly against the solid bronze door that allowed ingress to the chamber. Unfortunately, the weighty bulk of the thing that had been Antaris prevented the door from budging more than an inch. The one-time Sarafan lay still and cold, only through his own death able to keep the P'ramma from the one thing that could save her life. The thudding increased as the desperate vampire began to throw himself repeatedly against the door.
Detached from the noise, Freya read on. The next few pages were in diary form and constituted the account of the arrival of an Earth-born computer programmer on Nosgoth. It went on to describe his horror at the actions of the vampire oppressors, and his instigation of a cult of warrior priests, sworn to protect humanity from the jaws of the undead. As the diary progressed, it became evident that the author had given up all hope of returning to Earth, and had given himself completely to the struggle. The last entry was in a different hand and in Nosgoth's current script, written by a man who claimed to be his squire. Apparently, the human Raziel, whose journal she was now reading, became a martyr when he died at the hands of some yellow-eyed, blue-skinned demon shortly after he had taken the life of one Janos Audron - a most ancient evil by all accounts.
The maniacal laughter resounded in hideous echoes off the walls of the airtight chamber, gradually subsiding into spasmodic, choking coughs until silence once again reigned unchallenged.
The End
Seeing that there was no chance of interrupting the heated dispute that had broken out between the other nine, Freya turned to the Elite next to her as she began to run, her revelation spilling out as the mystery unravelled, "He hasn't gone time-streaming - he's gone world-hopping."
The vampire watched her departure in bemusement.
A half hour and a brief tussle with a rusted lever later, Freya descended cautiously into the vault below Kain's throne. As she progressed, she used the torch she had found outside to light the oil-filled braziers that constituted the room's light sources. She recoiled as the illumination revealed grisly trophies of Kain's victories, her expression shortly changing to one of wonder as she beheld the true scope of the chamber and the veritable hoard contained therein. Unsure as to where to look first, she moved towards the back of the room in order to begin a methodical search. Although the task was onerous, her resolve was strengthened by the thought that, in finding the documents, not only might she be able to help the Razielim, but she would at long last complete the quest that had led her through so many adventures. Her searching gaze alit almost immediately on a most incongruous-looking stone sarcophagus in the corner of the room, whose heavy lid eventually clattered to the floor to reveal none other than the long-sought-after Sarafan documents. With a wild grin of elation and a gleeful chuckle, she began to extract them.
Isca, meanwhile, had endeavoured to take control once again, and was currently barking orders right left and centre, trying to assess what just happened. Having coerced his men into some semblance of calm, he realised belatedly that Freya was also missing. He gave an exasperated sigh before asking if anyone had noticed where the woman had gone. When her parting words were passed to him by the guard who saw her leave, Isca, by dint of some insightful deductive reasoning, guessed her intentions. With a look of absolute terror on his face, he abandoned his men and raced off in the direction of the Sanctuary, knowing that she had gone to attempt to reclaim the texts, and praying to whatever Gods might still remain that he would get there in time.
He knew what guarded the vault.
In the musty gloom of Kain's treasure chamber, a hissing, slithering sound caused Freya to freeze in her rummaging and glance behind her. The room remained devoid of life - no doubt her presence had disturbed the centuries of dust that lay like a silken shroud over the Master Vampire's possessions. She returned to her examination of the multitude of leather- bound books and yellowed, crinkled papers only to find the sound was repeated. Putting down the sheaf she was holding, she freed her katana from its restraint and turned to appraise the room anew. The sound continued to echo from the lofty walls, the resonance disguising its source, and inducing the woman to stalk back down the main pathway to track down the cause. Before long, the sound reached a crescendo, bringing her to a halt at an archway flanked by two large chests, its depths lost in shadow. As she peered into the unfathomable blackness, something stirred within, and a weighty dragging sound accompanied the emergence into the light of a sight that made Freya's blood run cold.
The creature that dragged itself into the wan torchlight was as something from a fevered dream. That it had once been humanoid was probable, but far from certain: though it was bipedal, it seemed to have acquired a few extra limbs around its upper body in addition to the usual pair of arms. These appendages rose behind it in a blatant display of aggression, vicious, wedge-shaped stabbing claws adorning each extremity. Aside from these characteristics, the creature had obviously suffered much to become as it was: every joint on its entire form had been bent backwards ninety degrees in the wrong direction, the tendons and sinews holding the limbs stretched almost to snapping point. Worse still, the hapless beast's internal organs had been forced to the outside, each ruddy sac bloated and glistening and oozing odious sludge.
Freya needed little time to recognise that this was Kain's handiwork. Not only did this fit in perfectly with the characteristics of his final Dark Gift, but it was typical of the callous vampire master to have made the creature undead before consigning it to eternities of pain. The monster's face evinced its interminable and constant suffering, and it shortly became apparent in a moment that Freya would dearly have loved to forget, that the creature had retained its hold on life only by feeding on itself. A foul, phlegmy sound now caught her ear, and the woman realised in a second of awful clarity that it was attempting to speak. As the wasted vocal chords that had formed no word in the long aeons since Kain's damnation began to reverberate, Freya understood what the beast was trying to say:
"P'ramma."
There was now no way to prevent the knowledge from flooding into her consciousness, and as she looked closely at the ravaged, scarred face that rode atop the hideously elongated neck, the identity of the creature became undeniably clear.
"Antaris!"
Despite her horror and revulsion, Freya found she still felt pity for her one-time nemesis, abandoned here for who knew how many centuries in unimaginable agony, consigned to self-consumption in order to survive: no enemy deserved that. With a half-formed idea that she might try to mend the age-old rift between herself and the former Sarafan Lord, Freya lowered her weapon in a gesture of truce.
The creature seemed to relax somewhat, its fearsome appendages sinking towards the ground as it seemed to sense her intentions. Freya nodded slowly, keeping her eyes locked on the glittering black orbs that seemed to have been piled haphazardly onto the elongated face. Suddenly, the sharp- toothed jaw broke into a grotesque imitation of a grin as, in a movement too fast for the human eye to perceive, Antaris stabbed at her with two of his razor-sharp appendages, the first shearing straight through her shoulder and the other partially penetrating the right side of her abdomen. Too shocked even to scream, Freya found herself lifted aloft and pulled closer to the beast's drooling maw until their faces were inches apart. With a grimace of repulsion and pain, she summoned what strength remained in her and drove the Dark Angel straight into the monstrosity's chest. Enraged, and with no apparent ill-effects from her attempted impalement, Antaris slammed the woman into the ground with a satisfying crunch. Astounded by the creature's survival of her attack, Freya soon became aware that the demonic hilt of her sword was pressing ever closer to her own chest. Even worse, she found that Antaris was dribbling on her, and with a lascivious flick of his distended, putrescent tongue, he hissed,
"Just where I always wanted you."
Turning her head to avoid the putrid stench that issued from the horror's twisted mouth, she realised she must either act now or be crushed by the downwards pressure of her own weapon. With regret foremost in her mind, she began to force the hilt of the katana to the right, driving the tempered steel past its breaking point until it gave with a metallic snapping sound that echoed the heartbreak she felt at the demise of her staunch ally. With the upper half of the sword free, she tugged it out of the way and, with a scream of pain as the spined claw embedded in her upper body tore at the muscles she had no choice but to use, she drove the remains of the sword into the misshapen beast's brain. With an almighty roar, Antaris raised himself to his hind legs, his head colliding with the vaulted ceiling, his death throes freeing the woman from his penetrating grip. With a final cry that spoke more of release than fear, the foul thing that had once been a Sarafan warrior collapsed dead before the entrance to Kain's vault.
As the light faded from Antaris' tortured eyes, Freya looked down at her own wounds: the tear in her shoulder, although the claw had passed straight through, was likely not fatal, but the gaping hole in her lower abdomen did not bode well. She was frequently surprised at how much blood the human body could hold. With a grim smile, she accepted her fate, and, knowing that her remaining time could probably be counted in minutes, she began to drag herself towards the opened sarcophagus.
With one hand holding her innards in, she began to rifle through the papers. To her complete astonishment, she found the majority of them were written in Spanish. As she glanced distractedly at page after page of the yellowed texts, she found a wide diversity of information, ranging from ancient Sarafan battle plans to song lyrics that she recognised. Freya began to wonder if her mind had gone. Pushing the papers to one side, she dug through the dusty tomes, her attention eventually caught by an incongruous blue notebook with a logo on the cover which was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, not from Nosgoth. Consumed with curiosity despite the growing pain of her wounds, she began to read.
The first few pages read as an introduction to the owner of the notebook. The majority of its contents were also in Spanish, except for a small number of words which, in common with all true bilingual societies, were often written in the dominant language. With her knowledge of linguistics it was easy for her to see how the three repeated phrases; "Gaming guide", "Release Date" and "Programmer" had through centuries of oral corruption and consonantal drift been changed to "Gaminged", Relstadt" and "P'ramma".
She had at long last found the basis for the Sarafan prophecies, and the dying woman uttered an exhausted laugh at the irony of the revelation, an act which caused her to cough up a handful of some black, tarry substance. Freya continued to read in the time she had left to her.
A heavy pounding began at the far end of the room as a mighty shoulder was set forcedly against the solid bronze door that allowed ingress to the chamber. Unfortunately, the weighty bulk of the thing that had been Antaris prevented the door from budging more than an inch. The one-time Sarafan lay still and cold, only through his own death able to keep the P'ramma from the one thing that could save her life. The thudding increased as the desperate vampire began to throw himself repeatedly against the door.
Detached from the noise, Freya read on. The next few pages were in diary form and constituted the account of the arrival of an Earth-born computer programmer on Nosgoth. It went on to describe his horror at the actions of the vampire oppressors, and his instigation of a cult of warrior priests, sworn to protect humanity from the jaws of the undead. As the diary progressed, it became evident that the author had given up all hope of returning to Earth, and had given himself completely to the struggle. The last entry was in a different hand and in Nosgoth's current script, written by a man who claimed to be his squire. Apparently, the human Raziel, whose journal she was now reading, became a martyr when he died at the hands of some yellow-eyed, blue-skinned demon shortly after he had taken the life of one Janos Audron - a most ancient evil by all accounts.
The maniacal laughter resounded in hideous echoes off the walls of the airtight chamber, gradually subsiding into spasmodic, choking coughs until silence once again reigned unchallenged.
The End