BODY-SWAP

Chapter 10

Circle of Un-Life

All characters and locations from Nosgoth were created by Crystal Dynamics, Silicon Knights and Eidos. Go you guys! Make Soul Reaver 3 - you know you want to…

Thankyou to everyone who's read and reviewed. (Syvia - *hugs* Hydromatic? *sniggers…watches Kain fall, screeching, into a large paddling pool* Hydrophobic, more like. ^_^)This little tale is coming to a close, now. *sniff, sniff*. I hope you enjoyed it.

I am the first to step out into the Time-Streaming chamber. Young Kain lopes at my side with an easy, rangy, predator's stride, his head up and eyes intent on his surroundings. Behind us, Janos Audron, old even among vampires, his wings furled close to his back and his shoulders hunched with tension.

And behind Janos…

My body stumbles on a loose stone and Raziel nearly crashes to the floor in an ungainly manner. He uses a Nosgothian swearword that I've never even heard before and pushes crossly away from Janos, who has flung out an arm to support him.

"Get off, I'm all right, it's just this wretched female's body…"

Kain sniggers. He is an odd mix of age and immaturity, this one - half-full of wisdom from the centuries he has lived, and at the same time over-flowing with the arrogance of the young. I flick him in the ear with one of Raziel's talons, to keep him in his place, and he rumbles a growl in his porcelain throat, grinning. Damn. If I was in my own body, this could be construed as shameless flirting…

Damn.

"Looking for someone, demon?"

The voice from the shadows is instantly recognisable. My arm instinctively shoots out, just in time to feel Raziel thump into it as he surges forward in wrath. I restrain him with little difficulty - he is, after all, only human, now.

Moebius steps out from behind a pillar, and he is holding his staff raised like a weapon. Janos and Kain hiss like angry tom-cats and step forward to flank me.

"Moebius," I begin, but the Time-Streamer isn't looking at me. He is approaching Young Kain, and his eyes are glowing green…

"Monster," he growls- and now his tones are deep, inhuman, completely unlike the obsequious slime of Moebius. "Monster, I killed you once. You and your kind are finished as soon as the Device fully activates…"

I may have been able to stop Raziel, but I haven't a hope in hell of stopping Young Kain. He sniffs the air, once, then goes berserk in a flurry of claws and teeth, far too fast for the eye to follow. Moebius tries to block with his staff, but lets out a shocked wail of distress as his limbs fail to withstand the vampire's onslaught. His expression is totally bemused, as if he can't understand what's happening -

I grab Janos by the wing-tip and drag him across to me. "Janos," I say, in low, urgent tones, "that's not Moebius. We have to get Kain off him before he kills him."

"So," I say, in my best mediating voice, "the last thing you remember is drilling the guards in Meridian…"

The creature in Moebius's body casts a wary glance at Kain, who is still struggling in Janos's implacable grip, then nods. "The Device was almost complete," it rumbles. "I was preparing to order its activation. The Glyph network was carefully guarded against any sabotage. And then I find myself here, in this old man's form -"

It shrugs aside a fold of Moebius's cloak and sighs.

"What has become of my Nosgoth?" it despairs.

"So Moebius has escaped to the body of the Sarafan Lord?" asks Raziel, absently chewing on a strand of my hair. I glare at him and he takes it out of my mouth in a hurry. "What now, then? Do we have to go all the way to Meridian? Your body is starting to get tired. I have a headache and I left your handbag behind on the bus."

"We can't leave things like this," I return, watching the despondent Sarafan get up and start pacing slowly. "Moebius has not only messed with my life, he's messed with causality. We have to stop him. What do you mean, you left my handbag on the bus? That thing cost a fortune…"

Kain throws off Janos's restraining arm and says: "Does this mean that Moebius has my sword now?"

"Strictly speaking -" Raziel begins, but I cut him off and nod enthusiastically at the white-haired vampire.

"Absolutely," I say. "Evil man. Took your sword. Let's go get him."

Meridian…

The steam-punk atmosphere of the city is almost intolerable as we step out of the convenient time-streaming portal and out into the mist. Young Kain, possibly show-boating for the guests, fades into insubstantial fog and sidles off. Janos, who seems so relaxed about all this time travel that he might have been taking a stroll through his own blood-filled castle, walks beside me as we approach the Industrial Quarter where Sebastian met his death at Kain's claws.

"Where do we look?" asks Raziel, who I am convinced would have been taking pictures had he had a camera on him (yet another thing lost in my beloved handbag). "If I was an evil body-stealing Time-Streamer, where would I hide…?"

Kain appears out of a fog-bank to my left and narrowly misses getting a swipe from the wraith-blade in his gut - Raziel's body has instincts that react far faster than I could ever hope to control - and points rather smugly towards a large gate-house. A hulking form in heavy armour is gesticulating at a malfunctioning Glyph battery and shouting. Several slightly less bulky knights hurry to fetch a new one.

"He's alone now," says Janos softly, from my right. "Miss Angel. In Raziel's body, with your unique connection to the Reaver, you are our best chance at defeating him. Kain will go with you. He wears the gem."

I glance at the stone on Kain's armour. He nods, once, agreeing. And we rush the Sarafan Lord, together, Young Kain and I.

The Sarafan Lord says "Oof!" as Kain floors him with a pounce, and I quickly move to stand on the armoured cuirass, the wraith-blade pointed down at the exposed nape of the man's neck. "Don't move," I warn, in Raziel's best uber-threatening manner. "Moebius, I know it's you in there. I demand you put me back in my own body. This cowl is starting to chafe."

"Who are you people?" comes the somewhat muffled reply. "This place is an insane asylum. I do my best to organise the work-force in a pro-active manner, and this is the thanks I get…"

I exchange a look with Kain, who shrugs, as if to say, these Sarafan. Go figure.

" 'Organise the work-force in a pro-active manner'?" I repeat, sarcastically.

"Doesn't sound like Moebius," says Raziel, wandering forward now that any possible danger seems to have been averted. "Sounds more like…"

"Angel?" says the Sarafan Lord, somewhat querulously. "Is that you? VladimirsAngel?"

I lower the wraith-blade and step down. "We're too late," I say, as Janos joins us and Young Kain rips the Soul Reaver from the unresisting hand of the Sarafan Lord, "Moebius has moved on again. And this time I'm positive I know where he's gone."

The interlude that followed I am sure I will remember for the rest of my life. It's a memory I will lovingly store up in white velvet and rose-petals, carefully placed in a box in my closet to keep safe for all time. Maybe this makes me cruel and heartless - or maybe it just makes me one of those people who want to remember their dreams. Even the ones that aren't all kittens and cotton-candy.

In Raziel's dilapidated body I led two vampires back into my world on a grey, overcast afternoon in early April, 2003. I walked them into my office and up the stairs. Janos and Kain, beautiful as tigers and twice as deadly, and behind them, the somewhat weary but determined-looking figure of VladimirsAngel, carrying her ruined shoes in one muddied hand.

Some people ran screaming from our path. Some simply froze and stared, their coffee forgotten, papers falling like cherry-blossom in a storm from their limp hands. Were we a publicity stunt for a new movie? Was it Halloween already?

But for some reason, no-one dared stop us to ask. Can't think why that would be, can you?

I marched up to my boss's desk, Raziel's hooves cutting deep into the carpet-tile. I reached down. And in a beautiful moment that every downtrodden office dogsbody dreams of, I grasped Boss's collar in my claws and hauled her out of her chair as my co-workers fled their desks in panic.

Eye-to-eye with both of our enemies, I cocked Raziel's head to one side. "Moebius," I said, almost lovingly. "Tag. You're it. Now give us our bodies back." Janos and Kain leant over my captive and grinned, full-fanged and menacing.

And I had that wonderful few moments as Moebius's impotent fury creased Boss's face into a terrified scowl, before the world began to fade around me and I felt my own pink fingers drop my shoe-straps as our bodies swapped back…

Darkness.

"Do you think your boss will be angry with you?"

Raziel's voice, from my left. I snuggle deeper into my duvet with a pleased sigh and grin to myself in the blackness.

"No. I don't think she'll even admit it happened. Vampires and body-swaps - these things just don't exist in her world. She'll probably put it down to a tray of bad sushi and never speak of it again."

Silence as Raziel thinks about this, then:

"I am glad to be back in my body, you know. Even though it's dead, and not very pretty - it's mine. And I missed it."

I reach out, blind, in the night, feel for his shoulder where he lies next to me on the mattress, and pat it. "I know. I missed my body, too."

"Do you think Moebius will be happy in the Eternal Prison?" asks Raziel, sounding pleased with himself.

I shrug. "Don't see why not. He can spend happy afternoons playing cribbage with Magnus."

"What do you think he hoped to achieve by doing this to us?"

I consider for a moment. "It's possible he had plans to disrupt the path of your destiny by replacing you with me. I could never have followed the path of your life, you know. I'm only human, and perhaps he thought that if he abandoned me in Nosgoth I would perish without ever interfering in his games."

There is a heavy pause as both Raziel and I think about this weighty motive.

"It's possible he's just insane, of course," says Raziel, philosophically.

I look at the digital clock on my bedside table. "Crap. After midnight. I have to work in the morning. G'night, Raz."

A set of cool, smooth claws close on my shoulder, briefly, then release. "Goodnight, Angel."

I turn my head against the pillow and close my eyes.

"Goodnight, Raziel," from the other end of the bed.

"Goodnight, Janos," says Raziel, wearily.

"Goodnight, Angel," from my right.

I sigh and push some stray strands of pure, bone-white hair out of my face. "Goodnight, Kain. And move over, would you? You're stealing all the duvet."

So gradually, I drift off to sleep. Sometimes I have these dreams, you know…?

I awaken, suddenly, stretched out on a plain wooden couch, and sit up with a gasp. A female vampire with ridiculously oversized breasts restrained by skimpy lilac underwear is staring down at me and smiling.

"I am glad that you are with us again," she says. "Know that your name is Kain…"

Oh, no. Here we go again…

And so it ends! (or begins. Take your pick!) Thank you so much for reading. ^_^