URBAN NOSGOTHIC

Chapter 4

Legacy of Kain created by and belonging to Eidos Interactive, Crystal Dynamics, Silicon Knights.

He looks at me as if I'd just asked him if he'd mind terribly not being quite so blue.

"What?" he says, gruffly.

"Don't kill him, please don't kill him."

"What?" once again, and a slow blink of the empty eyes as he tries to digest the totally alien concept I'm presenting him with. The Reaver purrs on his arm, anticipating a soul to devour soon.

Eventually, after a long moment, Raziel says: "Why...not...?"

I belatedly realise that I'm still gouging him in the biceps with my nails, and I let go in a hurry. "Because...because..."

I'm aware of my boyfriend's terrified eyes fixed on me. He's waiting for the words that will reprieve him to fall from my lips. Waiting for me to snap the leash and bring the demon back under control. Because really, his eyes are saying, really, this can't be happening. Too many drugs, too much booze, not enough sex...this is what happens to you.

Raziel cocks his head to one side and shifts his weight from one hoof to another, bored. Idly, he starts to twist the Reaver in his grip, corkscrewing it in the wound. My boyfriend screams like a woman.

"Because the police will think I did it!" I manage, eventually. "You don't understand! They don't just let you get away with killing people here! They lock you away!"

Raziel just gazes at me, levelly. I know what he's thinking. There aren't enough police in the county to lock this one away. But he is still holding the box of the Soul Reaver game in his other hand, and he glances at it momentarily while he thinks.

The Reaver retracts, abruptly, with a disappointed whine like a nest of wasps. My boyfriend drops to the floor, bleeding all over the linoleum. I let out a long breath of relief. "Suppose you tell me, then," says Raziel, quietly, and I can sense that he's losing patience with this world and its petty no-killing-people rules. "Suppose you tell me where I am and exactly what this is?"

He throws the box at me, and I cringe automatically, but his throw is aimed at my hands and not calculated to hurt. I catch it, and meet his eyes.

"If you'll put him back in the bathroom," I say, slowly, indicating the bloodied figure on the floor, "then I'll show you."

Raziel leans forward in his seat, fascinated. The PS1 graphics may be slightly blocky, but it's obviously high cinema as far as he's concerned. He watches himself being cast into the Abyss, and his claws cut my sofa cushions to ribbons as he works them angrily. "It wasn't quite like that," he says, excitedly, his eyes fixed on the screen. "Not quite, but almost, almost..."

Funny how I'm almost getting used to him, now. My brain, no doubt running some protective sub-routine to stop me from toppling into gibbering uselessness, shows me the Domestic Raziel photo album: everybody needs a Soul Reaver about the house. Raziel in a pinny, washing up with his claws hidden in the suds. Raziel tending to daises with a prim little plant mister. Raziel locking me in the closet for thirty straight hours because I forgot to buy him any pretzels that week...oh, sorry. That's my very own personal domestic experience intruding on the fantasy.

True, I've had to restrain myself several times from offering him tea like I would any other guest. It is almost one in the morning, but the adrenaline in my system won't allow for fatigue. Besides, who could sleep? There's a dead man in my lounge and a bloodstained casualty in the bathroom. Come the morning, I'm in a whole lot of trouble.

Raziel and my cat eye each other with mutual loathing. "This is a game?" he repeats. He's said this several times already. Nosgoth lacks video gaming, so far as I've always understood, but he seems to have caught onto the idea quite quickly.

"What happens in the end?" he asks.

"You chase Kain into the Time Streaming Device. There's a sequel, " I add, because he looks vaguely disappointed, as if the whole of his crusade across time has not been documented, "but my boyfriend ended up using the disc as a coaster…"

Raziel seems to be thinking as he watches the demo.

"So where's yours?" he asks.

My turn to say "What?" in an incredulous manner. He starts flipping through the game manual, pausing occasionally to read instructions at random.

"Your game. Where is it?"

After a few seconds frenzied thinking, I uncover his logic and am actually quite impressed by his acumen. This is how his mind is running: if I am in a world where my life has been turned into a game, then this must be a world where your own personal reality is defined by being in a game. Ergo - where is the game that features the life of this mad woman sitting beside me?

"I don't have one," I reply. "It doesn't work like that."

He frowns.

"So you don't get instructions like these?"

I giggle, then clap a hand over my mouth to stifle it. "No. I wish I did, though." I notice that my game manual seems to have vanished inside a fold of his cowl. I don't think I'll be getting that back in a hurry.

"That man upstairs - he's not your enemy?" This is not really a question. He raises his head, seems to be sniffing. "You are lovers."

The idea that I can be identified as my boyfriend's "property" by scent alone sickens me. "But you fear him," Raziel continues. "Surely this is not the usual way with mated couples..."

His arrogance pricks me to respond. Of all the things I least expected to get out of this little encounter, new self-confidence was top of the list.

"Surely," I counter, "it is not the usual way for a father to be so insanely jealous of his son's achievements..."

We look at each other and I see challenge in his eyes. I submit. I always submit.

But he is not angry. Instead, he merely asks (and is there a hint of plaintiveness in his rock-steady voice?) "If my life is only a game to you...than why am I here?"

"I don't know," I reply, and add, quickly, "but thank god you are, Raziel. Thank you. Thank you."

It is the first time I have cause to say it, and it takes him by surprise. But he has not forgotten his manners, and he says, "You are welcome," in a tone that sounds bemused, but genuine.

Then he stands again with that odd, almost-graceful movement. His thin body with its prominent sweep of rib-cage and long, powerful limbs reminds me of a cheetah for a fleeting moment, and the whole slew of other unpleasant predatory metaphors slams home to me once again, making sure I don't forget that this is not a man. This is one of nature's carefully designed killers. He says: "The man upstairs. How much of a problem would it cause if he were to die?"

I want to say, "No problem. Kill him. Waste him. He doesn't deserve to live. I hate him. If you could have lent me your strength, your speed, I'd have done it myself a long time ago."

What I actually say is, "A lot. I could be put in prison for life. I'd never be free again."

"And you call this freedom that you have now?"

He sounds incredulous, and I must say I don't blame him. But he shrugs it off, obviously figuring that they have idiots in this dimension, too, and continues, "Then I'd better see what I can do about that wound. Or you'll be having a problem quite soon, if I'm any judge…"

He gives me a sharp, amused look. "And I am."