2- Madness
The reaver of souls ignored the sound of footsteps shying away. He knew that his visage was hideous, that to the humans around him he was far from an angelic saint. For now, it didn't bother him. He had too much to do.
Raziel loped down the path, which was little more than a deep rut carved into the earth next to Katalina's land. The acres next to the city walls were mostly farmlands, he had discovered, and they looked the same on this afternoon as they had on any other: scraggly patches of jungle blending into the distance and illuminated by rows of glyph globes.
It was an interesting existence, living off the wreckage of a despoiled land. As a vampire, he had fed the same way off a dwindling race. The only difference was that the humans' food had no will to survive or fight back. No wonder Katalina devoted nearly all her time to the care of her crops.
Raziel smiled inwardly. The middle-aged woman treated him as if he were one of her plants, something that needed to be weeded and moved closer to the glyph globe. It didn't seem to matter that he was several centuries her senior. He couldn't fathom the relief he felt at seeing his claws covered in something other than blood, but whatever it was, it drew him back to the human city when the hunt could wait a few more hours. Katalina was always glad to see him, and that he could understand; he too had lost children.
With a grunt of effort, Raziel leaped up, grabbed the edge of a stone landing, and sprang lightly on top of it. The stairs lay a few yards off, but eh... too much effort. The landing tapered off into a winding set of stairs that wound to the top of the city's outer wall, but he was feeling lazy. Raziel planted his claws into the wall with a satisfying *shink* and prowled up the wall like a four-legged spider.
The soul reaver stood at last at the human city's northern boundary. Away to the north, range after range of frozen mountains clawed at the sky. Mist spilled between the peaks, and in some valleys the faint wisps of clouds trailed and promised snow. Though it was mid-afternoon, the sky to the northeast was lighter than it was to the west. There, what remained of the great smokestack lay like a broken stick someone had planted upright in the snow. Black smoke still seeped from the tower's ruins, but it was like sap oozing from a fallen branch: weak, impotent.
Raziel strode along the wall's pathway, ignoring the human guard that stared after him. So he had left a series of three-hold marks on the inside of the wall... let them paint murals if it so offended their sense of aesthetics. The beast that Katalina had glimpsed inside him raced through his limbs and he could not have resisted if he wanted to.
The waters of the Abyss had burned so savagely...
...and Turel had thrown him in. Turel, his oldest brother, still younger than he. Turel, who had grasped his left shoulder and dragged him to the edge of the Abyss.
The soul reaver spread his ruined wings and let the wind carry him toward the smokestack. His claws curled at his side.
Turel, the last to die at his hand.
********************************************************
Hours later, Raziel stood on a small ridge built into the side of a mountain, glaring down at the petrified forest he could barely see in the darkness. He had loped through the landscape tirelessly, had let the hatred of centuries blaze through him- and he had traveled in a circle.
The soul reaver hopped off the ridge and continued walking with a frustrated sigh. There were always obstacles, he thought resignedly. If it wasn't getting lost, it was heaving around chunks of rock. So perhaps he should be thankful.
Raziel tilted his head. Had there been...?
The voices echoed again, and this time his ears placed them in the midst of the petrified forest. There had indeed.
He stepped cautiously into the wasteland and dropped to a crouch. If he was lucky, the voices belonged to humans. If he was luckier still, they would know the way to the smokestack.
He glanced toward the sky and idly wondered if his lucky stars were shining tonight.
The voices drew nearer until Raziel could make out their forms in the darkness. They were Turelim vampires, he realized at last, about six of them, trudging across the landscape and muttering darkly to each other.
"We should not have left," one of them growled above the others.
A Turelim near the front of the group turned, obviously in ill temper. "No, Klaean," it snapped, "we should have stayed and gone mad."
Klaean snorted. "At least then, Lord Turel would stand beside us."
The other sneered. "Lord Turel..." it hissed with contempt.
It was cut short as another vampire slashed the first across the face. "You will not speak of our father in that tone," the aggressor said flatly.
The wounded vampire slowly wiped blood from its face. "And you," it said in a measured voice, red eyes flaring, "will not strike at your betters again." Its arm lashed out like a loaded spring and the other Turelim fell soundlessly, except for the rain-like patter of blood against the fossilized tree trunks.
"That was unnecessary," Klaean commented after a pause.
"Don't tell me," the vampire answered with a laugh, "that you have not felt starved for blood these past days."
"No," Klaean admitted as it stooped next to the corpse.
Raziel turned in disgust as the cannibals went to work. In the days of the empire's glory, no vampire would fall to such depths, much less a pack of them. The thought that these were the progeny of his brother nearly made him ill. Kain was right; the age of Nosgoth's vampires was over.
"I smell something," one of the Turelim said suddenly.
Raziel froze.
The sound of their feasting stopped and the petrified forest lay silent. Along his right arm, Raziel felt the Soul Reaver, his wraith blade, coiling down his arm in anticipation of battle. Five against one, he thought fiercely, letting his claws burrow into the earth. It would be a short battle.
Raziel's muscles tensed but before he could lunge into the open, Soul Reaver swinging, the tense silence broke at the sound of a wordless howl. One of the Turelim gasped and Raziel found it hard not to; the howl came from a humanoid throat but surely not from a sound mind, and the speaker was not far off. A chorus of raucous laughter burst from the same source and drew nearer. Raziel heard the Turelim immediately spring away from the corpse.
"They followed us?"
"How many?"
"Less than five..."
They had no time before a volley of telekinetic projectiles slammed into the midst of the group. One hit the dead body and it flew spiralling into the air. The Turelim responded with a volley of their own. Stone-like trees exploded in black splinters and something shrieked in the dark.
Raziel did not recognize the red-eyed creatures that spilled from the night. No, he realized, he did: they had once been Turelim. One had sprouted two horns from its chest and patches of blue fur randomly covered its body. Another had ears that stretched four feet to either side of its head, and bones had sprouted along their topsides that made them resemble wings. Yet another was completely covered with blue fur and no ears, but it did have a glowing red eye in the middle of its abdomen. The three monsters lunged into the true Turelim like rabid wolves.
Raziel watched as the battled flared into chaos. The first abomination charged into Klaean and impaled its enemy with the horns growing from its chest. Then, with a high-pitched laugh, it tore out its own throat.
Two Turelim charged at the half-winged creature. Its ear-wings rose up, flared with white light, and then it flapped its wings down forcefully. The white light jumped from its ears to the Turelim, who stumbled as they ran. Their arms grasped at the air as if they were drowning.
Then they began to decay.
Their flesh blackened, crumbled, rotted away in seconds. One opened its mouth to scream, and as its mouth opened its cheeks vanished as if burned away by acid, its tongue curled like parchment and turned to dust, its eyes fell backward into its skull and disappeared. Both Turelim hit the ground as skeletons that looked several centuries dead.
The last Turelim climbed out from beneath two corpses, one the mutilated corpse of its comrade and the other the third abomination, its stomach-eye ripped into glowing red strands. Before the Turelim could gain its feet, however, the half-winged creature was upon it. Its left wing lashed out, tearing spine and shoulder tendons, its right wing caught beneath the shoulder blade and wrenched it free, and its claws plunged into its opponent's neck and yanked in a flurry of red pulp.The headless body fell, followed by a second, lighter thump.
"Pretty," the creature crooned. Raziel watched in disbelief as it leaned down and drew the Turelim's intestines out of its corpse like thread. When a sizable amount was free, the creature wrapped them around its shoulders as if they made up a shawl. "And it would be such a pretty thing for Latis, isn't it dear? Oh yes!" it piped in a high-pitched voice in answer to itself. "Such a pretty thing, she'd like it so! / Wouldn't she now? You do know how she tends to the extravagant... / We could say it cost so much, so very much..." The creature looked slyly at the dead bodies all around it. "...that they're still working to pay for it!" It tittered to itself in satisfaction. "So clever you are! Latis wouldn't think..." It paused. "Hmmmmm? Latis is dead? / Yes! Look! There she is. / Hmmmmm."
It tapped one bloody claw against its lip, studying one of the depraved creatures contemplatively.
"Oh, but she'd like it," it whined to itself. It eyed the intestines in its claws mournfully. "Maybe, maybe... ifffff..." It grabbed the stomach-eyed corpse and began to laboriously wind its grotesque gift around and around the body as if they were bandages. At the end of the coil, the creature tugged irritably and the strange rope snapped free of its corpse.
"There," it murmured to itself contentedly. "I told you she'd look pretty in it, didn't I? / Yes, yes you did, and she does look so wonderful... so wonderful..." It sighed. "Oohhh Latis, there are stars that would fall from the heavens to give light for you! Staaaarrrs, shiiiiining so briiiiight..." It began to dance with the corpse as if they were in a ballroom.
Raziel had had enough. He rose and stepped toward the dancing creature, the Soul Reaver tingling with the proximity of spilled blood. "Your 'Latis' is dead, creature," he said softly. "I can help you follow her."
It stopped and let go of the corpse, which fell to the ground wetly. "What's this, what's this?" it asked itself, tilting its head in question.
Raziel swung the Soul Reaver in answer.
The creature dodged surprisingly quickly, but the wraith blade slashed through its left ear. "Ayyyyah!" it screamed. "It nips, it nips!"
Again Raziel made no answer but pressed in with a vicious jab. The abomination ducked and scuttled to the side.
"How impolite," it hissed. "I don't like it at all. / Nor I!" It leapt toward him in a flash of blinding speed. He had time only to raise the Reaver before it slammed him into the ground, its talons sunken into his shoulders.
Raziel grunted with pain and stabbed at the creature wildly. Its wings slashed a bloody line across his leg, scraping against the bone. His own claws burst through the tender flesh of its ear-wings and peeled the membrane away. It screamed again and jerked its claws, hurling him into something hard that bashed against his exposed spine. The word 'tree' throbbed dully in his mind. The creature whirled to face him, both ear-wings hanging in tatters, almost like his own.
Tree... wood... fire...
Raziel forced his battered body into the summoning position. The pain nearly drove him into the spectral world. His reeling mind torturously rose, reached out-
The creature leapt just as the flame glyph flickered and exploded. The ancient trees flared orange and the creature screaming, hurtling through the air, suddenly on fire. Raziel barely managed to roll aside and the burning creature crashed into the tree he had slammed into moments before. Something cracked (was it the tree or the creature?) and the abomination fell, writhing, screaming. All its muscles clenched at once, and then it collapsed, its burning limbs falling without resistance to the scorched ground.
With an effort, Raziel reached up to the cowl that covered his face. His talons fumbled uselessly until they found the edge of the fabric, pulled it away enough to reveal his fangs, the empty place where his lower jaw had been burned away. He closed his eyes and called the creature's liberated soul to him... it came, and he drank it welcomingly. The pain faded into a distant memory.
The soul reaver replaced the cloth and gazed almostly contemplatively at the chaotic scene that lay before him. Those creatures... what had happened to Turelim's clan that would lead to the creation of such utterly corrupted beings? What had the still-sane Turelim been fleeing? He would not get his answers from the slowly disintegrating corpses.
And yet, Raziel reminded himself as he resumed his trek through the petrified forest, he had learned one important fact from the slain vampires: Turel was still alive, and he remained with his clan, whether he had turned into a depraved lunatic or not.
The reaver of souls ignored the sound of footsteps shying away. He knew that his visage was hideous, that to the humans around him he was far from an angelic saint. For now, it didn't bother him. He had too much to do.
Raziel loped down the path, which was little more than a deep rut carved into the earth next to Katalina's land. The acres next to the city walls were mostly farmlands, he had discovered, and they looked the same on this afternoon as they had on any other: scraggly patches of jungle blending into the distance and illuminated by rows of glyph globes.
It was an interesting existence, living off the wreckage of a despoiled land. As a vampire, he had fed the same way off a dwindling race. The only difference was that the humans' food had no will to survive or fight back. No wonder Katalina devoted nearly all her time to the care of her crops.
Raziel smiled inwardly. The middle-aged woman treated him as if he were one of her plants, something that needed to be weeded and moved closer to the glyph globe. It didn't seem to matter that he was several centuries her senior. He couldn't fathom the relief he felt at seeing his claws covered in something other than blood, but whatever it was, it drew him back to the human city when the hunt could wait a few more hours. Katalina was always glad to see him, and that he could understand; he too had lost children.
With a grunt of effort, Raziel leaped up, grabbed the edge of a stone landing, and sprang lightly on top of it. The stairs lay a few yards off, but eh... too much effort. The landing tapered off into a winding set of stairs that wound to the top of the city's outer wall, but he was feeling lazy. Raziel planted his claws into the wall with a satisfying *shink* and prowled up the wall like a four-legged spider.
The soul reaver stood at last at the human city's northern boundary. Away to the north, range after range of frozen mountains clawed at the sky. Mist spilled between the peaks, and in some valleys the faint wisps of clouds trailed and promised snow. Though it was mid-afternoon, the sky to the northeast was lighter than it was to the west. There, what remained of the great smokestack lay like a broken stick someone had planted upright in the snow. Black smoke still seeped from the tower's ruins, but it was like sap oozing from a fallen branch: weak, impotent.
Raziel strode along the wall's pathway, ignoring the human guard that stared after him. So he had left a series of three-hold marks on the inside of the wall... let them paint murals if it so offended their sense of aesthetics. The beast that Katalina had glimpsed inside him raced through his limbs and he could not have resisted if he wanted to.
The waters of the Abyss had burned so savagely...
...and Turel had thrown him in. Turel, his oldest brother, still younger than he. Turel, who had grasped his left shoulder and dragged him to the edge of the Abyss.
The soul reaver spread his ruined wings and let the wind carry him toward the smokestack. His claws curled at his side.
Turel, the last to die at his hand.
********************************************************
Hours later, Raziel stood on a small ridge built into the side of a mountain, glaring down at the petrified forest he could barely see in the darkness. He had loped through the landscape tirelessly, had let the hatred of centuries blaze through him- and he had traveled in a circle.
The soul reaver hopped off the ridge and continued walking with a frustrated sigh. There were always obstacles, he thought resignedly. If it wasn't getting lost, it was heaving around chunks of rock. So perhaps he should be thankful.
Raziel tilted his head. Had there been...?
The voices echoed again, and this time his ears placed them in the midst of the petrified forest. There had indeed.
He stepped cautiously into the wasteland and dropped to a crouch. If he was lucky, the voices belonged to humans. If he was luckier still, they would know the way to the smokestack.
He glanced toward the sky and idly wondered if his lucky stars were shining tonight.
The voices drew nearer until Raziel could make out their forms in the darkness. They were Turelim vampires, he realized at last, about six of them, trudging across the landscape and muttering darkly to each other.
"We should not have left," one of them growled above the others.
A Turelim near the front of the group turned, obviously in ill temper. "No, Klaean," it snapped, "we should have stayed and gone mad."
Klaean snorted. "At least then, Lord Turel would stand beside us."
The other sneered. "Lord Turel..." it hissed with contempt.
It was cut short as another vampire slashed the first across the face. "You will not speak of our father in that tone," the aggressor said flatly.
The wounded vampire slowly wiped blood from its face. "And you," it said in a measured voice, red eyes flaring, "will not strike at your betters again." Its arm lashed out like a loaded spring and the other Turelim fell soundlessly, except for the rain-like patter of blood against the fossilized tree trunks.
"That was unnecessary," Klaean commented after a pause.
"Don't tell me," the vampire answered with a laugh, "that you have not felt starved for blood these past days."
"No," Klaean admitted as it stooped next to the corpse.
Raziel turned in disgust as the cannibals went to work. In the days of the empire's glory, no vampire would fall to such depths, much less a pack of them. The thought that these were the progeny of his brother nearly made him ill. Kain was right; the age of Nosgoth's vampires was over.
"I smell something," one of the Turelim said suddenly.
Raziel froze.
The sound of their feasting stopped and the petrified forest lay silent. Along his right arm, Raziel felt the Soul Reaver, his wraith blade, coiling down his arm in anticipation of battle. Five against one, he thought fiercely, letting his claws burrow into the earth. It would be a short battle.
Raziel's muscles tensed but before he could lunge into the open, Soul Reaver swinging, the tense silence broke at the sound of a wordless howl. One of the Turelim gasped and Raziel found it hard not to; the howl came from a humanoid throat but surely not from a sound mind, and the speaker was not far off. A chorus of raucous laughter burst from the same source and drew nearer. Raziel heard the Turelim immediately spring away from the corpse.
"They followed us?"
"How many?"
"Less than five..."
They had no time before a volley of telekinetic projectiles slammed into the midst of the group. One hit the dead body and it flew spiralling into the air. The Turelim responded with a volley of their own. Stone-like trees exploded in black splinters and something shrieked in the dark.
Raziel did not recognize the red-eyed creatures that spilled from the night. No, he realized, he did: they had once been Turelim. One had sprouted two horns from its chest and patches of blue fur randomly covered its body. Another had ears that stretched four feet to either side of its head, and bones had sprouted along their topsides that made them resemble wings. Yet another was completely covered with blue fur and no ears, but it did have a glowing red eye in the middle of its abdomen. The three monsters lunged into the true Turelim like rabid wolves.
Raziel watched as the battled flared into chaos. The first abomination charged into Klaean and impaled its enemy with the horns growing from its chest. Then, with a high-pitched laugh, it tore out its own throat.
Two Turelim charged at the half-winged creature. Its ear-wings rose up, flared with white light, and then it flapped its wings down forcefully. The white light jumped from its ears to the Turelim, who stumbled as they ran. Their arms grasped at the air as if they were drowning.
Then they began to decay.
Their flesh blackened, crumbled, rotted away in seconds. One opened its mouth to scream, and as its mouth opened its cheeks vanished as if burned away by acid, its tongue curled like parchment and turned to dust, its eyes fell backward into its skull and disappeared. Both Turelim hit the ground as skeletons that looked several centuries dead.
The last Turelim climbed out from beneath two corpses, one the mutilated corpse of its comrade and the other the third abomination, its stomach-eye ripped into glowing red strands. Before the Turelim could gain its feet, however, the half-winged creature was upon it. Its left wing lashed out, tearing spine and shoulder tendons, its right wing caught beneath the shoulder blade and wrenched it free, and its claws plunged into its opponent's neck and yanked in a flurry of red pulp.The headless body fell, followed by a second, lighter thump.
"Pretty," the creature crooned. Raziel watched in disbelief as it leaned down and drew the Turelim's intestines out of its corpse like thread. When a sizable amount was free, the creature wrapped them around its shoulders as if they made up a shawl. "And it would be such a pretty thing for Latis, isn't it dear? Oh yes!" it piped in a high-pitched voice in answer to itself. "Such a pretty thing, she'd like it so! / Wouldn't she now? You do know how she tends to the extravagant... / We could say it cost so much, so very much..." The creature looked slyly at the dead bodies all around it. "...that they're still working to pay for it!" It tittered to itself in satisfaction. "So clever you are! Latis wouldn't think..." It paused. "Hmmmmm? Latis is dead? / Yes! Look! There she is. / Hmmmmm."
It tapped one bloody claw against its lip, studying one of the depraved creatures contemplatively.
"Oh, but she'd like it," it whined to itself. It eyed the intestines in its claws mournfully. "Maybe, maybe... ifffff..." It grabbed the stomach-eyed corpse and began to laboriously wind its grotesque gift around and around the body as if they were bandages. At the end of the coil, the creature tugged irritably and the strange rope snapped free of its corpse.
"There," it murmured to itself contentedly. "I told you she'd look pretty in it, didn't I? / Yes, yes you did, and she does look so wonderful... so wonderful..." It sighed. "Oohhh Latis, there are stars that would fall from the heavens to give light for you! Staaaarrrs, shiiiiining so briiiiight..." It began to dance with the corpse as if they were in a ballroom.
Raziel had had enough. He rose and stepped toward the dancing creature, the Soul Reaver tingling with the proximity of spilled blood. "Your 'Latis' is dead, creature," he said softly. "I can help you follow her."
It stopped and let go of the corpse, which fell to the ground wetly. "What's this, what's this?" it asked itself, tilting its head in question.
Raziel swung the Soul Reaver in answer.
The creature dodged surprisingly quickly, but the wraith blade slashed through its left ear. "Ayyyyah!" it screamed. "It nips, it nips!"
Again Raziel made no answer but pressed in with a vicious jab. The abomination ducked and scuttled to the side.
"How impolite," it hissed. "I don't like it at all. / Nor I!" It leapt toward him in a flash of blinding speed. He had time only to raise the Reaver before it slammed him into the ground, its talons sunken into his shoulders.
Raziel grunted with pain and stabbed at the creature wildly. Its wings slashed a bloody line across his leg, scraping against the bone. His own claws burst through the tender flesh of its ear-wings and peeled the membrane away. It screamed again and jerked its claws, hurling him into something hard that bashed against his exposed spine. The word 'tree' throbbed dully in his mind. The creature whirled to face him, both ear-wings hanging in tatters, almost like his own.
Tree... wood... fire...
Raziel forced his battered body into the summoning position. The pain nearly drove him into the spectral world. His reeling mind torturously rose, reached out-
The creature leapt just as the flame glyph flickered and exploded. The ancient trees flared orange and the creature screaming, hurtling through the air, suddenly on fire. Raziel barely managed to roll aside and the burning creature crashed into the tree he had slammed into moments before. Something cracked (was it the tree or the creature?) and the abomination fell, writhing, screaming. All its muscles clenched at once, and then it collapsed, its burning limbs falling without resistance to the scorched ground.
With an effort, Raziel reached up to the cowl that covered his face. His talons fumbled uselessly until they found the edge of the fabric, pulled it away enough to reveal his fangs, the empty place where his lower jaw had been burned away. He closed his eyes and called the creature's liberated soul to him... it came, and he drank it welcomingly. The pain faded into a distant memory.
The soul reaver replaced the cloth and gazed almostly contemplatively at the chaotic scene that lay before him. Those creatures... what had happened to Turelim's clan that would lead to the creation of such utterly corrupted beings? What had the still-sane Turelim been fleeing? He would not get his answers from the slowly disintegrating corpses.
And yet, Raziel reminded himself as he resumed his trek through the petrified forest, he had learned one important fact from the slain vampires: Turel was still alive, and he remained with his clan, whether he had turned into a depraved lunatic or not.