The shrieking wail of sirens cut through the thick, humid air, adding more
torment to senses that were already overloaded with the unfamiliar effects
of smog and neon. In the distance, a woman screamed and a gunshot sounded
with a harsh, staccato crack while uber-happy skate-punk music blared in
defiance of its surroundings from the rickety doors of a nearby club.
Three shadowy forms now wound their way along the smoky backstreets of
Newport's docklands in the direction of the old waterfront warehouse,
hoping that the ramshackle old building held the means to allow them egress
from this noisome society, and return them to the more normal order of
vampiric existence.
In the course of their journey, Freya had remained at the rear while Isca and Raziel advanced before her, the vampire's statuesque form dwarfing that of the young computer programmer at his side. As they walked along, Freya reflected on the speed at which the Vampire Lord's true personality had begun to assert itself over that of Javier. She observed him engage in conversation with his second-in-command, a floppy-haired youth in jeans and a T-shirt, and the set of his shoulders, coupled with the look of burning intensity in his eyes reminded her of the battles she had fought against his alter ego for the right to hold land in the oppressive days of Kain's Vampiric Empire. Freya grinned to herself as she envisioned those confrontations in a different light: in her mind's eye, a young computer hack with greasy hair and a punky T-shirt waged a vicious war against the daughter of an oil tycoon and a feminist evangelist. The woman choked down a giggle.
As their steps brought them at last into the less populated district along the waterfront, Raziel asked his companions about the secret of shifting between worlds and how they had discovered it.
"We asked the Oracle, and he was able to send us through." Replied Freya cheerily, detaching her attention with some regret from Isca's form, still loping ahead of them.
At her words, Raziel stopped dead, his gaze fixed in front of him.
You did what?" The tone of his voice, though barely above a whisper, was cold enough to strike terror into the fledgling's soul.
Freya glanced at Isca in alarm, the smile draining from her lips. "We asked the Oracle . . ." she repeated quietly, confused by his anger.
"You do know who the Oracle was?" asked Raziel, turning his dark eyes on her with uncharacteristic malice. "You don't, do you? !Idiota!"
Even whilst being berated, Freya found herself wondering at the change that had come over Javier in the past few hours. Although still aware of his human identity, it seemed that his twenty-odd years of mortal life could not help but be superseded by his millennia of undeath; and although Javier's personality still seeped through on occasion (especially when roused or cursing), Raziel was evidently rising to dominance.
"Who was he?" put in Isca, breaking through the tense atmosphere that had arisen between his Lord and his fledge.
Raziel turned his baleful glare on his second-in-command, a look of utter disgust twisting his lips. "Moebius."
Isca's shock carried through into the appalled look he gave Freya. "Why would the Time-Streamer aid us?"
Raziel clenched his jaw. "He wouldn't. How did he tell you you would return?"
"He gave us a vial," replied Isca, removing the object from Freya's numb grasp. Raziel snatched it from him without a word and raised the opened bottle to his nose.
"Well?" asked Isca.
"Wine." Replied the one-time Vampire Lord, hurling he bottle from him so it shattered noisily against the concrete floor. He rounded on Freya, the ire of a centuries-old killer barely contained in the wiry form of the Hispanic youth.
"You realise you may have trapped all three of us here for good?"
Freya nodded miserably, eyes glued to the floor. As Raziel strode off alone in the direction of the warehouse, she sought Isca's side, hoping to derive some meagre comfort from his touch. To her horror, she found her one-time fighting partner was looking at her not with anger, nor reproach, but with an expression that spoke eloquently of his complete and utter disappointment in his fledgling. It was almost more than she could bear. Freya sat down dejectedly on a nearby bench, allowing the other two to put some distance between her and them before she followed. Not that it mattered now - none of them was going anywhere. She gathered her coat around her in a gesture that usually belied cold, but in this case spoke only of the young vampire's disconsolation. Even as she did so, Freya felt something that made her eyes dart upwards with sudden revelation as she felt the clank of the remains of her katana inside the roomy confines of her leather trenchcoat.
A heaven-born idea was beginning to take root in her mind, a conglomeration of the apparently 'useless' information Moebius had given them, together with her own suspicions about the weapon. If, as Moebius had inferred, there were points on both planets where space converged, then two questions presented themselves: Why were the points not open all the time, and why did they not always transport the traveller to the same place? It occurred to her that it was possible that the points on either world moved like a combination lock - one that could be opened at any point, but only when two nexus points on either world were aligned. This might be the answer to the second part of the question, but there was still more to the conundrum, ranging back to the original question as to why the breaches were not open all the time. Freya's eyes strayed to the shards of the katana, and, face lit by a growing expression of hope, she leaped to her feet and took off in pursuit of the others.
She caught up with them at the warehouse to find they had just arrived at the nexus point, which the two vampires had previously seen fit to mark with a large 'X'.
"Subtle." remarked Raziel sarcastically.
"I may have an idea." began the fledgling breathlessly as she careened to a halt next to them.
"Does it involve allowing our enemies to give us one-way tickets to other planets?"
Shrugging off the acerbic query, Freya began to outline her theory. As she finished, Raziel asked, "So how do we open the nexus point?"
"I think all we need to do is use the katana - I believe it's an Oopart." At the puzzled stares she was afforded by both vampire and human, Freya elucidated, "An out-of-place artefact. I believe its presence in the right place causes a breach to open in the fabric of space/time between Earth and Nosgoth. It may even be from Nosgoth - I don't know."
"You watch too much 'Star Trek'," opined the Javier part of Raziel, although it was clear from his eyes that he was intrigued and hopeful.
Hardly daring to breathe, Freya placed the halves of the katana gingerly in the centre of the nexus point and stood back, watching for signs of a fissure or the unmistakeable shimmering effect that accompanied shifting. Nothing happened for several long, fraught moments. Eventually, Raziel let out his breath with a hiss of vexation. Freya tried to think quickly, more to assuage the former Vampire Lord's wrath than to speed their departure from Earth. However, his voice interrupted her musings unexpectedly with a helpful suggestion:
"Maybe there's a trigger. What were you doing when you shifted?"
The woman considered the circumstances of her two trips. "The first time I was looking for burglars, and the second I was in the middle of a visit from the bailiffs, repossessing my stuff - and trying to con me out of that sword, as it happens."
"Both threatening situations," remarked Raziel. "Maybe the arm activates in response to its owner's peril?"
Isca, who had remained out of the baffling conversation for the most part, now stalked off towards the warehouse entrance. "Time and space, no idea. Peril? That I can help with."
Raziel and Freya had just enough time to exchange bemused glances before Isca came pelting back in, followed by a small group of unsavoury-looking characters, most of whom were armed, albeit crudely. Not even wanting to know what her sire had done to get them to chase him, Freya mentally willed whatever force it was that might control the item's shifting ability to work, and much to her delight and immense relief, the heat-wave effect began to manifest itself above the remains of the Dark Angel.
As the three began to shift, Isca kept a close eye on Raziel. It occurred to him that his Lord's true form might not be restored when they arrived back on Nosgoth, and the vampire was not at all sure what to do should this particular situation ensue. In any event, it was too late to worry about such matters now, and he watched with malicious amusement as the gang members' faces froze in disbelief while their proposed victims vanished into thin air.
*
The nexus portals of Nosgoth were ripped apart once again as three travellers attempted to gain ingress to its hallowed grounds. The first two were welcomed: being of vampiric nature, they evidently belonged. The third caused a minor headache for the creators and maintainers of the portals. The being was recognised at a genetic level as the Vampiric Messiah Raziel, however, it seemed that the creature was attempting to pass through the nexus point into Nosgoth in the form of a young human male. The recent catastrophic alterations in the course of the Vampire Planet's history meant that the time-stream was still struggling to rectify itself and forge a new course through the annals of the ages. Nosgoth's very existence was balancing on the edge of a coin: the addition of one more major anomaly to its fragile equilibrium would likely tip the balance.
In the barest fraction of a second, the decision was taken.
*
Isca and Freya quickly took stock of their new surroundings: the odious slime dripping from every lichen-covered rock, accompanied by the foul stench of rotting vegetation emanating from every stagnant pool led to the inevitable identification of the Termagant swamp. Another glance at their environs showed that they were alone. They barely had time to take in a couple of horrified breaths before Raziel came hurtling back through the nexus point in the uncompromising throes of a millennium of metamorphosis and vampiric evolution, to land in an undignified heap in a nearby puddle. The pair dashed to his side, Isca quickly pulling the still-changing form from the cold embrace of the swamp and moving him to a drier spot on higher ground. A few minutes' evaluation of the speed of his evolution assured the two that their Lord would remain in his unconscious state for a few hours more. As yet unsure of the time-period in which they might have landed, the party made its way to a rocky outcrop, relatively free from the stench of the putrid mire below, and sat down to rest until Raziel's recovery should be complete.
Before long, Freya had a small fire burning, and, after covering the Vampire Lord's dormant form with her trenchcoat (much to Isca's amusement - it was not as though vampires could suffer from lack of heat), she took her seat at her companion's side.
"I don't understand it, Isca: why did he end up on Earth in his natural state while I stayed Vampire? And why has he returned to his latest form now?"
The vampire shook his head with a shrug, unwilling to even enter into conjecture on a topic that baffled him so completely. Instead he changed the subject abruptly to a question that had been preying on his mind for the last four days.
"Were you tempted to stay?"
Freya glanced in surprise at the fearsome warrior in whose one-armed embrace she was currently resting, reading his naked expression and interpreting from it the need for a reassuring reply.
"Only if you did," she answered, holding his gaze with a lopsided grin.
"Sentimental fool." he chided.
"Ooh, you . . .!" Freya stopped as she found she couldn't think of a suitable insult for the situation. So instead, she thumped him in the leg, turned her back on him, and stuck her nose in the air, arms folded pointedly across her chest.
"The silent treatment?" Freya's only response was to raise her nose higher, face still turned away from the teasing vampire. "You know I like a challenge."
Fully aware of the truth of his last statement, Freya turned back towards her lover, her look of mischievous glee equalling his own.
"Why do you think I provoke you?"
*
Author's Notes/Review Responses:
I think this is the longest I've left any of these stories without updating. I've got good excuses, though - not only have I spent half the last week learning how to patch up broken people and bring them back from the brink of death (aka bandaging and CPR), but I also had (dan dan daaaaaaan) no idea where the story was going. S'OK, fret not, I've figured it out now. Anyway, my bloke's off out tonight with his work mates (I feel a "dealing with Javier's beer-speak" incident coming on), so I might be able to get another chapter up tonight - I've got most of it written anyway.
I didn't make up the 'Ooparts' term, by the way. I read it in a bizarre and highly biased little book that contained hundreds of examples of these out-of-place artefacts throughout history - gold necklaces found in millennia-old geodes and the like. Quite a fun read, but the author was a certifiable whacko.
Oh yeah, and I could really have done with Vladimir's Angel's 'Dictionary of Technobabble' when writing this chapter. Serves me right for digging myself into such a hole. : (
*
Deionarra: Thanks for your last review of 'Return to Nosgoth'. Further to your declaration of affiliation, I would like to announce that I will be raising an army in preparation for an invasion of Nosgoth in the near future. *whips out paper and pencil and starts designing uniforms, all skin- tight black leather with revealing necklines*
You can sign up here *waggles recruitment form*
Bet you're sorry you volunteered now, aren't ya? : )
*
Many thanks to Syvia for pointing out my stooooopid mistake with The Oracle / Moebius. It has led to a rather interesting plot development, however, so thanks again. *wanders off with nose buried in Blood Omen script, filled with revelations*
MikotoTribal: I hadn't played past the bat-form in Blood Omen either, which was why I made the above mistake. I can send you a copy of the script if you like, although you'll probably have to fight Kain for it. How are the house guests, by the way? ; )
*
SpitefulHope: Evil? Me? Never. Wait 'til you see what I've got planned for the rest of the story and THEN decide if I'm evil. 0 :-)
In the course of their journey, Freya had remained at the rear while Isca and Raziel advanced before her, the vampire's statuesque form dwarfing that of the young computer programmer at his side. As they walked along, Freya reflected on the speed at which the Vampire Lord's true personality had begun to assert itself over that of Javier. She observed him engage in conversation with his second-in-command, a floppy-haired youth in jeans and a T-shirt, and the set of his shoulders, coupled with the look of burning intensity in his eyes reminded her of the battles she had fought against his alter ego for the right to hold land in the oppressive days of Kain's Vampiric Empire. Freya grinned to herself as she envisioned those confrontations in a different light: in her mind's eye, a young computer hack with greasy hair and a punky T-shirt waged a vicious war against the daughter of an oil tycoon and a feminist evangelist. The woman choked down a giggle.
As their steps brought them at last into the less populated district along the waterfront, Raziel asked his companions about the secret of shifting between worlds and how they had discovered it.
"We asked the Oracle, and he was able to send us through." Replied Freya cheerily, detaching her attention with some regret from Isca's form, still loping ahead of them.
At her words, Raziel stopped dead, his gaze fixed in front of him.
You did what?" The tone of his voice, though barely above a whisper, was cold enough to strike terror into the fledgling's soul.
Freya glanced at Isca in alarm, the smile draining from her lips. "We asked the Oracle . . ." she repeated quietly, confused by his anger.
"You do know who the Oracle was?" asked Raziel, turning his dark eyes on her with uncharacteristic malice. "You don't, do you? !Idiota!"
Even whilst being berated, Freya found herself wondering at the change that had come over Javier in the past few hours. Although still aware of his human identity, it seemed that his twenty-odd years of mortal life could not help but be superseded by his millennia of undeath; and although Javier's personality still seeped through on occasion (especially when roused or cursing), Raziel was evidently rising to dominance.
"Who was he?" put in Isca, breaking through the tense atmosphere that had arisen between his Lord and his fledge.
Raziel turned his baleful glare on his second-in-command, a look of utter disgust twisting his lips. "Moebius."
Isca's shock carried through into the appalled look he gave Freya. "Why would the Time-Streamer aid us?"
Raziel clenched his jaw. "He wouldn't. How did he tell you you would return?"
"He gave us a vial," replied Isca, removing the object from Freya's numb grasp. Raziel snatched it from him without a word and raised the opened bottle to his nose.
"Well?" asked Isca.
"Wine." Replied the one-time Vampire Lord, hurling he bottle from him so it shattered noisily against the concrete floor. He rounded on Freya, the ire of a centuries-old killer barely contained in the wiry form of the Hispanic youth.
"You realise you may have trapped all three of us here for good?"
Freya nodded miserably, eyes glued to the floor. As Raziel strode off alone in the direction of the warehouse, she sought Isca's side, hoping to derive some meagre comfort from his touch. To her horror, she found her one-time fighting partner was looking at her not with anger, nor reproach, but with an expression that spoke eloquently of his complete and utter disappointment in his fledgling. It was almost more than she could bear. Freya sat down dejectedly on a nearby bench, allowing the other two to put some distance between her and them before she followed. Not that it mattered now - none of them was going anywhere. She gathered her coat around her in a gesture that usually belied cold, but in this case spoke only of the young vampire's disconsolation. Even as she did so, Freya felt something that made her eyes dart upwards with sudden revelation as she felt the clank of the remains of her katana inside the roomy confines of her leather trenchcoat.
A heaven-born idea was beginning to take root in her mind, a conglomeration of the apparently 'useless' information Moebius had given them, together with her own suspicions about the weapon. If, as Moebius had inferred, there were points on both planets where space converged, then two questions presented themselves: Why were the points not open all the time, and why did they not always transport the traveller to the same place? It occurred to her that it was possible that the points on either world moved like a combination lock - one that could be opened at any point, but only when two nexus points on either world were aligned. This might be the answer to the second part of the question, but there was still more to the conundrum, ranging back to the original question as to why the breaches were not open all the time. Freya's eyes strayed to the shards of the katana, and, face lit by a growing expression of hope, she leaped to her feet and took off in pursuit of the others.
She caught up with them at the warehouse to find they had just arrived at the nexus point, which the two vampires had previously seen fit to mark with a large 'X'.
"Subtle." remarked Raziel sarcastically.
"I may have an idea." began the fledgling breathlessly as she careened to a halt next to them.
"Does it involve allowing our enemies to give us one-way tickets to other planets?"
Shrugging off the acerbic query, Freya began to outline her theory. As she finished, Raziel asked, "So how do we open the nexus point?"
"I think all we need to do is use the katana - I believe it's an Oopart." At the puzzled stares she was afforded by both vampire and human, Freya elucidated, "An out-of-place artefact. I believe its presence in the right place causes a breach to open in the fabric of space/time between Earth and Nosgoth. It may even be from Nosgoth - I don't know."
"You watch too much 'Star Trek'," opined the Javier part of Raziel, although it was clear from his eyes that he was intrigued and hopeful.
Hardly daring to breathe, Freya placed the halves of the katana gingerly in the centre of the nexus point and stood back, watching for signs of a fissure or the unmistakeable shimmering effect that accompanied shifting. Nothing happened for several long, fraught moments. Eventually, Raziel let out his breath with a hiss of vexation. Freya tried to think quickly, more to assuage the former Vampire Lord's wrath than to speed their departure from Earth. However, his voice interrupted her musings unexpectedly with a helpful suggestion:
"Maybe there's a trigger. What were you doing when you shifted?"
The woman considered the circumstances of her two trips. "The first time I was looking for burglars, and the second I was in the middle of a visit from the bailiffs, repossessing my stuff - and trying to con me out of that sword, as it happens."
"Both threatening situations," remarked Raziel. "Maybe the arm activates in response to its owner's peril?"
Isca, who had remained out of the baffling conversation for the most part, now stalked off towards the warehouse entrance. "Time and space, no idea. Peril? That I can help with."
Raziel and Freya had just enough time to exchange bemused glances before Isca came pelting back in, followed by a small group of unsavoury-looking characters, most of whom were armed, albeit crudely. Not even wanting to know what her sire had done to get them to chase him, Freya mentally willed whatever force it was that might control the item's shifting ability to work, and much to her delight and immense relief, the heat-wave effect began to manifest itself above the remains of the Dark Angel.
As the three began to shift, Isca kept a close eye on Raziel. It occurred to him that his Lord's true form might not be restored when they arrived back on Nosgoth, and the vampire was not at all sure what to do should this particular situation ensue. In any event, it was too late to worry about such matters now, and he watched with malicious amusement as the gang members' faces froze in disbelief while their proposed victims vanished into thin air.
*
The nexus portals of Nosgoth were ripped apart once again as three travellers attempted to gain ingress to its hallowed grounds. The first two were welcomed: being of vampiric nature, they evidently belonged. The third caused a minor headache for the creators and maintainers of the portals. The being was recognised at a genetic level as the Vampiric Messiah Raziel, however, it seemed that the creature was attempting to pass through the nexus point into Nosgoth in the form of a young human male. The recent catastrophic alterations in the course of the Vampire Planet's history meant that the time-stream was still struggling to rectify itself and forge a new course through the annals of the ages. Nosgoth's very existence was balancing on the edge of a coin: the addition of one more major anomaly to its fragile equilibrium would likely tip the balance.
In the barest fraction of a second, the decision was taken.
*
Isca and Freya quickly took stock of their new surroundings: the odious slime dripping from every lichen-covered rock, accompanied by the foul stench of rotting vegetation emanating from every stagnant pool led to the inevitable identification of the Termagant swamp. Another glance at their environs showed that they were alone. They barely had time to take in a couple of horrified breaths before Raziel came hurtling back through the nexus point in the uncompromising throes of a millennium of metamorphosis and vampiric evolution, to land in an undignified heap in a nearby puddle. The pair dashed to his side, Isca quickly pulling the still-changing form from the cold embrace of the swamp and moving him to a drier spot on higher ground. A few minutes' evaluation of the speed of his evolution assured the two that their Lord would remain in his unconscious state for a few hours more. As yet unsure of the time-period in which they might have landed, the party made its way to a rocky outcrop, relatively free from the stench of the putrid mire below, and sat down to rest until Raziel's recovery should be complete.
Before long, Freya had a small fire burning, and, after covering the Vampire Lord's dormant form with her trenchcoat (much to Isca's amusement - it was not as though vampires could suffer from lack of heat), she took her seat at her companion's side.
"I don't understand it, Isca: why did he end up on Earth in his natural state while I stayed Vampire? And why has he returned to his latest form now?"
The vampire shook his head with a shrug, unwilling to even enter into conjecture on a topic that baffled him so completely. Instead he changed the subject abruptly to a question that had been preying on his mind for the last four days.
"Were you tempted to stay?"
Freya glanced in surprise at the fearsome warrior in whose one-armed embrace she was currently resting, reading his naked expression and interpreting from it the need for a reassuring reply.
"Only if you did," she answered, holding his gaze with a lopsided grin.
"Sentimental fool." he chided.
"Ooh, you . . .!" Freya stopped as she found she couldn't think of a suitable insult for the situation. So instead, she thumped him in the leg, turned her back on him, and stuck her nose in the air, arms folded pointedly across her chest.
"The silent treatment?" Freya's only response was to raise her nose higher, face still turned away from the teasing vampire. "You know I like a challenge."
Fully aware of the truth of his last statement, Freya turned back towards her lover, her look of mischievous glee equalling his own.
"Why do you think I provoke you?"
*
Author's Notes/Review Responses:
I think this is the longest I've left any of these stories without updating. I've got good excuses, though - not only have I spent half the last week learning how to patch up broken people and bring them back from the brink of death (aka bandaging and CPR), but I also had (dan dan daaaaaaan) no idea where the story was going. S'OK, fret not, I've figured it out now. Anyway, my bloke's off out tonight with his work mates (I feel a "dealing with Javier's beer-speak" incident coming on), so I might be able to get another chapter up tonight - I've got most of it written anyway.
I didn't make up the 'Ooparts' term, by the way. I read it in a bizarre and highly biased little book that contained hundreds of examples of these out-of-place artefacts throughout history - gold necklaces found in millennia-old geodes and the like. Quite a fun read, but the author was a certifiable whacko.
Oh yeah, and I could really have done with Vladimir's Angel's 'Dictionary of Technobabble' when writing this chapter. Serves me right for digging myself into such a hole. : (
*
Deionarra: Thanks for your last review of 'Return to Nosgoth'. Further to your declaration of affiliation, I would like to announce that I will be raising an army in preparation for an invasion of Nosgoth in the near future. *whips out paper and pencil and starts designing uniforms, all skin- tight black leather with revealing necklines*
You can sign up here *waggles recruitment form*
Bet you're sorry you volunteered now, aren't ya? : )
*
Many thanks to Syvia for pointing out my stooooopid mistake with The Oracle / Moebius. It has led to a rather interesting plot development, however, so thanks again. *wanders off with nose buried in Blood Omen script, filled with revelations*
MikotoTribal: I hadn't played past the bat-form in Blood Omen either, which was why I made the above mistake. I can send you a copy of the script if you like, although you'll probably have to fight Kain for it. How are the house guests, by the way? ; )
*
SpitefulHope: Evil? Me? Never. Wait 'til you see what I've got planned for the rest of the story and THEN decide if I'm evil. 0 :-)