MAGIC KINGDOM

Chapter 8 – Hippy Children

Disclaimer: Raziel, Kain, Nosgoth and the rest of the Legacy of Kain world belong to those clever computer folk at Eidos, Crystal Dynamics and Silicon Knights. Kurt Wagner and his image inducer were created by imaginative people at Marvel Comics: Lupa and Vladimir (oh god…them again..?) are my property and I shall do with them as I wish. Mwhahaha. ^_^ Donovan (Raziel's long-lost son) belongs to SheSmaug the Guardian of Tears. Middle-Earth is the creation of JRR Tolkein, although the elves, I suspect, have been around longer…

*wipes brow* wow, if this goes on, I'll have to have a whole separate chapter just for the disclaimer…anyway, here we go. Enjoy! :) This is the penultimate chapter of this little tale.

Raziel managed to stay in the Nexus for almost one whole day before the trouble began.

That first day, Kurt cooked pancakes for breakfast, and then they all went out into the park opposite. Raziel, having lived in Nosgoth for most of his long years, was rather startled by all the greenery. Lupa and Kurt played catch with an old basketball.

"You're not allowed to play unless we get a medicine ball," Lupa warned Raziel. "I don't trust you not to puncture it."

Raziel, thwarted, sat down on the grass and examined the daisies in some confusion. There had been no flowers in Nosgoth since the vampires had come. The Seraphan side of him realised that he had rather missed them.

Lupa, eventually tiring of a ball game where your opponent can teleport so fast he was almost in two places at once, returned to Raziel's side to find him carefully making a daisy chain, the tiny flowers held in the very tips of his claws.

"You know, if you still looked your old self, this image would be very weird," she said, flopping down next to him as he speared one stalk through the centre of another. "Actually, scratch that. It's weird anyway. Didn't your daddy ever tell you, vampires don't make daisy chains?"

"Daddy was away from home a lot," said Raziel, distantly, dangling his half-finished chain from one hand. "He travelled. He killed. He maimed. He wasn't known for talking about flowers."

Lupa chuckled. Raziel linked the two ends of the chain together and dropped it over her ears. She almost went cross-eyed trying to stare at the daisies on her brow.

"I think I'm going to change my name and become a hippy flower-child," she said. "From now on I'm going to live on a kibbutz and you shall call me Moonbell Lovebegonia."

Raziel burst out laughing.

"And you shall be my consort, known as Bluemist Ecowarrior."

"I most certainly will not!"

Lupa paused and looked at him sidelong.

"Will not what, though?" she asked. "Will not take on your rightful hippy-name….or will not be my consort?"

Raziel opened his mouth to reply, but too late – Nightcrawler had appeared in the branches of the tree above and dropped the basketball onto his head.

"I'm gonna put your tail in a blender, you little blue freak!" Lupa bellowed, giving chase to the mutant. Raziel sat back on the grassy bank, thinking.

In the afternoon and evening, with Kurt suitably chastised and gone over to Vladimir's place to play computer games, Lupa and Raziel drifted back to the Nexus Mall. Lupa had pizza on her mind – Raziel wasn't hungry. He rarely was. The pancakes that morning had merely provided him with new ways of making food sculpture.

"We could try and get back into the cinema," Lupa said, shocking him out of his reverie. "I could wear a wig and a big trench-coat. Or you could hide me under your image inducer."

"Does it work like that?" Raziel asked, rather suspecting that it didn't.

"I don't know." Lupa sat down on a bench as a crowd of tourists from Middle-Earth swarmed past them. "I don't even know if I want to see a movie anyway."

Raziel flattened against the wall to avoid being trampled by elves. "Are you all right?" he asked. "You seem rather…I don't know, quiet."

Lupa kicked her heels on the bench. "I've been meaning to talk to you," she said, "but I've never found the right moment exactly. Or the right way to do it. Or…oh, hell, there just isn't any right time or way to do this."

"What?"

Raziel by this time was thoroughly worried. "What is it? Are you sick? What's wrong?"

Lupa smiled at the concern reflected in his holo-image, but kept her eyes on the floor, not looking him in the face.

"No, no. I'm not sick. I'm not dying."

"Then what?"

"Raziel, would you do me a favour?"

"Of course. Name it."

Lupa turned her head and looked at him.

"Can you just turn the inducer off?" she said. "It might make this easier."

Raziel hesitated only a moment – and as his claw was moving towards the device on his wrist, a voice hailed him from across the rapidly emptying plaza.

"Raziel."

He stopped dead, inducer still active.

It was Kain.

"Lupa, get out of here," Raziel hissed in a low tone. Kain was still a distant figure on the other side of the mall – but he was approaching steadily, footfalls seeming loud on the tiled floor.

"No. I'm not afraid of him."

"You should be! Now get going." He tried to shove her behind him, but, with his eyes fixed on Kain, his aim was poor and she dodged.

"This is a touching little scene, Raziel," Kain's voice echoed from the shop-fronts. Aware that the holgrammatic wings were arched in anger above his back, Raziel growled, warningly. "I see that my information was correct…you are restored."

"How did you find out?" Raziel spat at him.

"Simple. Your little whelp looks a lot like you, did you know that?" Kain, standing now merely a few yards away, folded his arms and smiled. "I think he got a little lost, playing in the warp-gates. I…helped him find his way home."

An image of the cub dangling helplessly in Kain's grip filled Raziel's mind, and he snarled. "If you've hurt my son…"

Kain saw the flash of bared fangs and laughed. "Temper, temper, Raziel! It doesn't do to get angry…you fight so poorly when you're angry."

Lupa, glaring from behind Raziel, said:

"I would say that it doesn't do to be arrogant, Mr Kain…especially to the man who has already opened a can of whup-ass on you once."

Kain peered around Raziel's arm and said: "Ah, yes, your new conquest. I see restoring your old self has restored your old character as well."

"Conquest?! Let me at him. I'll bite his kneecaps off –"

"Lupa. Sssh," said Raziel, dangerously.

Kain drew close, scrutinising his 'son' from all angles. Raziel held as still as a statue, thinking every moment that Kain would see it, realise that it was all an illusion.

Kain took a step back, an expression of almost-curiosity emerging on his face. "Fascinating," he murmured. "How did you do it? There is no way it could be done."

"You'd be surprised what these new worlds can teach a man," Raziel said, stonily. Kain nodded, slowly.

"This place is certainly a revelation. I never knew the gate system could be used to travel through the different physical dimensions as well as through time…"

"Time? What are you talking about?" Raziel snapped, but Kain contented himself with looking smug and not answering.

"Enough of this. I killed you once. It's time to repeat the action."

"You want him?"

Lupa, to Raziel's horror, stepped out in front of him.

"You want him?" she repeated. "Then you have to go through me."

Kain, to his credit, managed a whole two seconds of calm before bellowing with laughter.

"You, werewolf?" he spluttered. "Skin-changer? Four-foot brain on two-foot legs?"

"That's it," said Lupa, eyes blazing, "you're going down, buddy."

Kain saw her crouch, saw her eyes light up from within like yellow flame. Lupa's wolf-girl shape collapsed inwards, changing, bones lengthening, hands flattening into paws. Raziel too watched, transfixed, as his friend changed into one of the largest silver wolves he had ever seen.

Lupa the wolf coiled like a snake ready to strike, then lunged forward at Kain, red jaws open in a snarl, claws skittering on the shiny floor. Kain grasped her by the ruff, his claws drawing blood to stain the silver fur, and the wolf yelped. Her cry of pain finally goaded Raziel into action, and he swung at Kain, blind with fury. Kain dropped Lupa to the ground, where she lay licking weakly at her wound, and engaged Raziel in combat instead.

"Your destiny is not in this place, Raziel," Kain taunted as he ducked a kick aimed at his head. "You should come back to Nosgoth. Go back to the Abyss. It's safer for you."

Raziel charged at him and body-slammed him into a shop window, which shattered, showering them both with glass and the remains of a display of tennis balls, which bounced cheerfully around Raziel's hooves as he pivoted to avoid Kain's inevitable roar and swift retaliation. He wasn't fast enough. Kain drove him through the open doors of the shop next-door and they ended up wrestling in a broken pile of ladies' fashion items and coathangers.

"Look," Raziel snapped, shoving a floral vest top into Kain's mouth, "little flowers. On you they look good. Maybe you should join me and Lupa on our kibbutz."

"Your wolf-girl won't live to go anywhere with you when I'm done," Kain growled, picking up the nearest thing to hand and hitting Raziel over the head with it. Unfortunately, it was a handbag. Raziel snorted.

"Handbags at dawn, Kain?"

He covered his head with his claws as a further barrage of blows with expensive mock-crocodile skin rained down on him. Unfortunately, the buckle on the handbag strap caught his wrist, and the image inducer spat fat white sparks as it exploded.

Raziel looked up at Kain with empty eyes as the vampire image faded like mist from around him. Kain was staring at him in confusion.

"What is this trickery?" he whispered. "What have you done?"

Okay. I'm sorry. It's a cliffhanger! (a technical story-telling term and everything) Next chapter up…soon…I hope…^_^ I will do my best!