*AUTHOR'S INSERT*
Wooha, reviewers! Much gratitude goes out to you all.
Lillian: Thanks for the compliments. But... *sucks it away with a vacuum cleaner* None of that self-deprecatory nonsense! A teacher of mine told me that everyone has something to teach, and for once it wasn't teacherly bullshit. You have full rein to deal out criticism with the best of them. 8)
Syvia: Yah, I reached a kind of crisis once I finished this chapter because it seemed that Turel is the most sympathetic character in the story! Lousy minds-of-their-own characters.
Mana Angel: I know what you mean, though Melchiah seemed to be the most redeemable of the five. That is, he was the only one without a huge ego and a compulsive urge to taunt Raziel. :\
Ruff_Collie: Glad you like it! *grin*
DigitalJessie: Ooh, sorry I kept you waiting so long. I hope you and the, eh... chibi thing were comfortable.
Demon Hunter Anamae: Thanks for the feedback. The ending will indeed have a little 'oomph' to it... but it won't come for a while. ;)
*/AUTHOR'S INSERT*
4- From Ourselves
In the darkness beneath Turel's throneroom, Ishtar sat alone and waited.
Three hours had passed since the Clan Lord had killed his own son and fled. Poor half-mad Turel; he did not see the significance of this day. But, Ishtar reflected, though his servants had removed two of her eyes, they could not have removed the last. And with that invisible eye, she saw all that he could not.
The air itself was taut with expectation. It was as if the whole of Nosgoth teetered at the edge of some monumental event, waiting for one moment to propel it into the future. She saw time spreading like a blanket from her feet down a dozen possible paths, and at the same time she saw tiny events in the present gathering together. A Zephonim in the Silenced Cathedral compulsively walked in figure-eights... packs of mad Turelim straggled south... the wreckage of a noble sought revenge against his last brother. Ishtar had seen these moments for centuries.
She smiled in the darkness. That had not diminished the excitement she felt for finally living them.
The vampire stood and stretched her limbs. At long last, it was time to be free.
Ishtar's claws closed around the heavy links of the chain. If Raziel had seen the spell she cast next, immediately he would have thought of the two Turelim in the petrified forest who had decayed to death. The chain rusted and turned brittle as if time itself flowed from Ishtar's claws. The links rottted away, eroded into thin metal lines, and finally dissolved into fine gray dust.
Ishtar brushed it off and flexed her neck thankfully. Ahhh, small pleasures. From here... her blind face clouded. From here...
She stumbled to the chamber's entrance, touching the walls with her claws. Up the stairs, she knew, into the throne room, past the doors to the left, and into the streets. Small journey. And yet...
Without fail, she always saw something ominous in new beginnings.
********************************************************
Less than a mile away, the shadow of ruined wings fell across the Turelim city.
Raziel had, at first, not understood the fate of Turel's clan. The city of his brother had looked imposing when he had stumbled across it at last in the strained light of dawn. It was built of pinnacles of volcanic rock that looked like black claw-marks gouged into the sky. But the bridges connecting the rock-towers showed no hint of movement. As he paced through the city, he had not found any of its inhabitants, but he could hear them. The rocks distorted the echoes of what sounded like battle, so it seemed to come from all around. Raziel knew the Turelim were there, but they were off fighting an enemy he had not seen.
Would the humans have attacked them as they had attacked the Dumahim?
Could the Turelim have fallen as easily?
Raziel's hooves slapped gently against the stone as he crossed another rock span. Turel was not as proud has his brother Dumah had been, he reflected. Not even when Raziel, his greatest rival and only superior excepting Kain, had been sentenced to death as a traitor.
Such a long time ago. Perhaps, in the centuries that Raziel had spent endlessly falling, that too had changed.
He caught sight of the ruined mass that had been the smokestack and stepped to the edge of the rock span for a better look. The entire top half of the stack was missing, and part of it lay in a scorched heap at the smokestack's base. Some kind of violent struggle had happened here days ago, more intense than the other battles Raziel heard throughout the city. Thin lines of smoke still seeped from the ruins as if the flames had not fully died out.
Wait.
Raziel squinted at the ruins and as he watched, a cloud of smoke burst from the wreckage and curled upward. The smoke from the ruins grew thicker.
Someone was rebuilding the fire.
He felt something lurch inside him and he broke into a run, the slapping of his hooves building to a rapid crescendo. With a reckless leap he left the rock span, wings outstretched, and fell heavily onto another rock span level with the smokestack's entrance. This Raziel entered at a dead run, only slowing when he entered the smokestack's central chamber.
Whoever was building the fire was not immediately visible. The floor formed a rim around a large pit in the middle of the room, which blazed with yellow light and thick smoke. Looking up, he saw the smoke travel up through the hollow interior of the tower and into the sky.
The smoke filling the tower's remnants made it almost impossible to see. Raziel let the Soul Reaver slide down his arm and the blade licked at his flesh with what he swore was hunger. This would be the only Turelim he had actually encountered all day. If he had to beat it for hours, he decided, he would learn where Turel lay hidden.
Some catastrophic noise cracked through the tower, and Raziel turned in time to see several massive logs tumbling into the central pit. They had been tossed in almost carelessly. He dropped to a crouch, the Soul Reaver wavering brightly in front of him, and strained his eyes for a look at his adversary.
Behind the smoke, red vampiric eyes gazed back at him.
"Raziel," said a familiar voice. "You should not have come."
Raziel merely stared as his brother moved into sight. The Soul Reaver burned ferociously up and down his arm. "Turel."
His oldest brother's mutations were as grotesque as those of his younger brethren. Raziel's first thought was that Turel had mutated into a giant slug. His skin had the rubbery texture and filmy color of maggots. His squirming lower body crawled with what looked like insect legs, but were actually protrusions of tiny bones. Every time Turel moved, the snapping of these bones accompanied it. He dragged himself forward with one arm, thick and muscular, while another, ridiculously thin and emaciated, slapped uselessly at his other shoulder. His head had sprouted gigantic ears with leathery membranes. But the worst mockery was his chest, where long ago he had tattooed his clan symbol. Not only was it now blown up and distorted into a grotesque parody, but from the center of his symbol, what might have been a leathery wing hung useless. And it was far too similar to the wings by which Raziel had been damned.
Turel stopped his painful slither, and his brother watched as the tiny bones beneath his belly began to heal. "How courteous of you to grant me a visit, big brother," he said. "But I'm afraid you will be less than satisfied, Raziel. You have nothing to do here."
"I remember you being wiser than that."
Turel gave him a pained smile. "And I you," he said as he dragged himself back the way he came. "But... fate has a way of delivering justice. Your task was complete before you began it." He gathered the logs stacked against the tower's wall and cast them down into the pit and the growing flames. "Leave," he said when the crash subsided. "Grant me that small mercy."
Raziel slowly followed his brother. In his mind, Turel watched bemusedly as Raziel plunged toward the unending pain of the Abyss.
"Did you do so much for me?" he demanded quietly. "Did you do so much for my clan?!"
"All I could do then, brother, is all I can do now. It is the great truth and injustice that we, vampires, immortals and gods, cannot weep. That is..." He slashed his claws across his own chest. In moments, the flesh began to mend. "...except to bleed."
"Soon, you will not have to."
Turel let out a sickly laugh. "Would it stop so readily! No, Raziel, the damned never cease weeping. Surely it is damnation to see my children destroy each other in their madness, my clan's mastery crumble to idiocy..." He looked at Raziel intensely. "...because of you."
Raziel looked at him incredulously. "Clearly, your sense has abandoned you. But-"
"You have not watched," Turel mumbled heedlessly. "No abandonment of the senses was this... but their ruthless and indiscriminate destruction. This cannot be called insanity. It is... far more terrible." He leaned over the pit's edge to glimpse the flames and leaned back, satisfied. "And to know it is your own doing. To know you have piled each stone of your empire on the other, and it is your hand that tears them down."
"*Turel*-"
"This was Lenath," Turel said mournfully. He gently picked up a limp body, a sharpened staff still protruding from its flesh. He gave the corpse a long look, then threw it into the flames.
"So you see," Turel said, turning, "how you and I have suffered the same fate. Disgrace, loss of all for which we have labored." He painfully slithered toward the pit. "And what meaning can all the works of the world have when they are destroyed by their *creator*?"
Raziel's eyebrows drew together. He was on the verge of understanding what Turel planned...
Turel met Raziel's white glowing eyes with his own red eyes. "In the end," he murmured, "there was no meaning."
Raziel stumbled toward the pit. He meant to call out, in rage or disappointment or something else he did not know, but he could not. Instead he listened to the cries of his brother burning in the flames, curling up with the smoke.
Wooha, reviewers! Much gratitude goes out to you all.
Lillian: Thanks for the compliments. But... *sucks it away with a vacuum cleaner* None of that self-deprecatory nonsense! A teacher of mine told me that everyone has something to teach, and for once it wasn't teacherly bullshit. You have full rein to deal out criticism with the best of them. 8)
Syvia: Yah, I reached a kind of crisis once I finished this chapter because it seemed that Turel is the most sympathetic character in the story! Lousy minds-of-their-own characters.
Mana Angel: I know what you mean, though Melchiah seemed to be the most redeemable of the five. That is, he was the only one without a huge ego and a compulsive urge to taunt Raziel. :\
Ruff_Collie: Glad you like it! *grin*
DigitalJessie: Ooh, sorry I kept you waiting so long. I hope you and the, eh... chibi thing were comfortable.
Demon Hunter Anamae: Thanks for the feedback. The ending will indeed have a little 'oomph' to it... but it won't come for a while. ;)
*/AUTHOR'S INSERT*
4- From Ourselves
In the darkness beneath Turel's throneroom, Ishtar sat alone and waited.
Three hours had passed since the Clan Lord had killed his own son and fled. Poor half-mad Turel; he did not see the significance of this day. But, Ishtar reflected, though his servants had removed two of her eyes, they could not have removed the last. And with that invisible eye, she saw all that he could not.
The air itself was taut with expectation. It was as if the whole of Nosgoth teetered at the edge of some monumental event, waiting for one moment to propel it into the future. She saw time spreading like a blanket from her feet down a dozen possible paths, and at the same time she saw tiny events in the present gathering together. A Zephonim in the Silenced Cathedral compulsively walked in figure-eights... packs of mad Turelim straggled south... the wreckage of a noble sought revenge against his last brother. Ishtar had seen these moments for centuries.
She smiled in the darkness. That had not diminished the excitement she felt for finally living them.
The vampire stood and stretched her limbs. At long last, it was time to be free.
Ishtar's claws closed around the heavy links of the chain. If Raziel had seen the spell she cast next, immediately he would have thought of the two Turelim in the petrified forest who had decayed to death. The chain rusted and turned brittle as if time itself flowed from Ishtar's claws. The links rottted away, eroded into thin metal lines, and finally dissolved into fine gray dust.
Ishtar brushed it off and flexed her neck thankfully. Ahhh, small pleasures. From here... her blind face clouded. From here...
She stumbled to the chamber's entrance, touching the walls with her claws. Up the stairs, she knew, into the throne room, past the doors to the left, and into the streets. Small journey. And yet...
Without fail, she always saw something ominous in new beginnings.
********************************************************
Less than a mile away, the shadow of ruined wings fell across the Turelim city.
Raziel had, at first, not understood the fate of Turel's clan. The city of his brother had looked imposing when he had stumbled across it at last in the strained light of dawn. It was built of pinnacles of volcanic rock that looked like black claw-marks gouged into the sky. But the bridges connecting the rock-towers showed no hint of movement. As he paced through the city, he had not found any of its inhabitants, but he could hear them. The rocks distorted the echoes of what sounded like battle, so it seemed to come from all around. Raziel knew the Turelim were there, but they were off fighting an enemy he had not seen.
Would the humans have attacked them as they had attacked the Dumahim?
Could the Turelim have fallen as easily?
Raziel's hooves slapped gently against the stone as he crossed another rock span. Turel was not as proud has his brother Dumah had been, he reflected. Not even when Raziel, his greatest rival and only superior excepting Kain, had been sentenced to death as a traitor.
Such a long time ago. Perhaps, in the centuries that Raziel had spent endlessly falling, that too had changed.
He caught sight of the ruined mass that had been the smokestack and stepped to the edge of the rock span for a better look. The entire top half of the stack was missing, and part of it lay in a scorched heap at the smokestack's base. Some kind of violent struggle had happened here days ago, more intense than the other battles Raziel heard throughout the city. Thin lines of smoke still seeped from the ruins as if the flames had not fully died out.
Wait.
Raziel squinted at the ruins and as he watched, a cloud of smoke burst from the wreckage and curled upward. The smoke from the ruins grew thicker.
Someone was rebuilding the fire.
He felt something lurch inside him and he broke into a run, the slapping of his hooves building to a rapid crescendo. With a reckless leap he left the rock span, wings outstretched, and fell heavily onto another rock span level with the smokestack's entrance. This Raziel entered at a dead run, only slowing when he entered the smokestack's central chamber.
Whoever was building the fire was not immediately visible. The floor formed a rim around a large pit in the middle of the room, which blazed with yellow light and thick smoke. Looking up, he saw the smoke travel up through the hollow interior of the tower and into the sky.
The smoke filling the tower's remnants made it almost impossible to see. Raziel let the Soul Reaver slide down his arm and the blade licked at his flesh with what he swore was hunger. This would be the only Turelim he had actually encountered all day. If he had to beat it for hours, he decided, he would learn where Turel lay hidden.
Some catastrophic noise cracked through the tower, and Raziel turned in time to see several massive logs tumbling into the central pit. They had been tossed in almost carelessly. He dropped to a crouch, the Soul Reaver wavering brightly in front of him, and strained his eyes for a look at his adversary.
Behind the smoke, red vampiric eyes gazed back at him.
"Raziel," said a familiar voice. "You should not have come."
Raziel merely stared as his brother moved into sight. The Soul Reaver burned ferociously up and down his arm. "Turel."
His oldest brother's mutations were as grotesque as those of his younger brethren. Raziel's first thought was that Turel had mutated into a giant slug. His skin had the rubbery texture and filmy color of maggots. His squirming lower body crawled with what looked like insect legs, but were actually protrusions of tiny bones. Every time Turel moved, the snapping of these bones accompanied it. He dragged himself forward with one arm, thick and muscular, while another, ridiculously thin and emaciated, slapped uselessly at his other shoulder. His head had sprouted gigantic ears with leathery membranes. But the worst mockery was his chest, where long ago he had tattooed his clan symbol. Not only was it now blown up and distorted into a grotesque parody, but from the center of his symbol, what might have been a leathery wing hung useless. And it was far too similar to the wings by which Raziel had been damned.
Turel stopped his painful slither, and his brother watched as the tiny bones beneath his belly began to heal. "How courteous of you to grant me a visit, big brother," he said. "But I'm afraid you will be less than satisfied, Raziel. You have nothing to do here."
"I remember you being wiser than that."
Turel gave him a pained smile. "And I you," he said as he dragged himself back the way he came. "But... fate has a way of delivering justice. Your task was complete before you began it." He gathered the logs stacked against the tower's wall and cast them down into the pit and the growing flames. "Leave," he said when the crash subsided. "Grant me that small mercy."
Raziel slowly followed his brother. In his mind, Turel watched bemusedly as Raziel plunged toward the unending pain of the Abyss.
"Did you do so much for me?" he demanded quietly. "Did you do so much for my clan?!"
"All I could do then, brother, is all I can do now. It is the great truth and injustice that we, vampires, immortals and gods, cannot weep. That is..." He slashed his claws across his own chest. In moments, the flesh began to mend. "...except to bleed."
"Soon, you will not have to."
Turel let out a sickly laugh. "Would it stop so readily! No, Raziel, the damned never cease weeping. Surely it is damnation to see my children destroy each other in their madness, my clan's mastery crumble to idiocy..." He looked at Raziel intensely. "...because of you."
Raziel looked at him incredulously. "Clearly, your sense has abandoned you. But-"
"You have not watched," Turel mumbled heedlessly. "No abandonment of the senses was this... but their ruthless and indiscriminate destruction. This cannot be called insanity. It is... far more terrible." He leaned over the pit's edge to glimpse the flames and leaned back, satisfied. "And to know it is your own doing. To know you have piled each stone of your empire on the other, and it is your hand that tears them down."
"*Turel*-"
"This was Lenath," Turel said mournfully. He gently picked up a limp body, a sharpened staff still protruding from its flesh. He gave the corpse a long look, then threw it into the flames.
"So you see," Turel said, turning, "how you and I have suffered the same fate. Disgrace, loss of all for which we have labored." He painfully slithered toward the pit. "And what meaning can all the works of the world have when they are destroyed by their *creator*?"
Raziel's eyebrows drew together. He was on the verge of understanding what Turel planned...
Turel met Raziel's white glowing eyes with his own red eyes. "In the end," he murmured, "there was no meaning."
Raziel stumbled toward the pit. He meant to call out, in rage or disappointment or something else he did not know, but he could not. Instead he listened to the cries of his brother burning in the flames, curling up with the smoke.