*AUTHOR'S INSERT*
Oi! It's been awhile. Sorry, I hope I haven't lost all of you.
Well, Sylvia Plath once said that if she couldn't make a cathedral out of a poem, she'd make a footstool. She was a very wise woman. So put on your Scattered Ashes gear once again- the uber-plotty chapter has emerged at last, and we march on! *melodramatic swell of violins*
*/AUTHOR'S INSERT*
9- Children of a Lesser God
Raziel bounced the corpse over his shoulder with a grunt. It really had been amusing to see the lost human look at him with relief, then remember that she was supposed to fear him. There had been more traffic than usual through the clanlands, which made the kill more awkward. Not that the humans would have been warm and welcoming to him anyway. But, they did seem to be refugees from the human citadel. Had Kain told the truth? Were the humans leaving for Avernus?
He grinned inwardly. More food for Ishtar if they were, and more to celebrate with once Kain was finally gone.
The soul reaver scratched at the back of his neck with his free hand, wincing as his claw caught on an exposed tendon. His life, if it could be described as such, had taken an interesting turn in the past few days, one he did not quite comprehend. Too many emotions rose with the review of every event that had occurred in the past while. Kain was alive; at least that was simple. Raziel hated him, and tonight he would be dead. The hatred should not have been a comfort. But it was, compared to his reaction to the discovery of Ishtar. She was his daughter, or had been in another life. And now as then she was a vampire, the creature he had spent all of his new existence hunting down and killing. He did not want to consider the implication any further.
And the humans. What of them? As if in answer, the corpse slung across his shoulder suddenly lurched off-balance. Raziel tossed a hanging limb onto his back, ignoring the wet pop, and readjusted the awkward weight. His mind barely skipped a beat and wholly ignored the corpse flopping like a batch of undercooked noodles. His life as a vampire was hardly noble. He led his life as a soul reaver purely for revenge. But a human life, after immortality? Perhaps the unborn of the human race were the luckiest of them all.
Raziel tilted his head, automatically softening his footfalls when he heard the voice. Dusk had faded into night; Ishtar must have awoken. Her faint voice rose and fell in a tune he remembered from long ago.
"...parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme..."
He turned the corner of a ruined wall to find two enormous wings spanning the width of the corridor. Ishtar seemed to be in the midst of balancing and slowly rotating on the tip of her tail.
"...remember me to one who lives there..."
Her tail uncoiled and her wings stretched upward. It seemed all of her weight balanced on the dark blue hairs standing rigidly straight at the end of her tail.
"...she once was a true love of mine."
Raziel let his burden collapse to the ground with a thunk-splat. On hearing this, Ishtar's tail fell into a loose coil while her wings folded tightly into her back. When her hooves touched the ground, it seemed as if her body suddenly remembered that it had weight and could not rest on the hair of her tail.
"It seems your fatigue is short-lived," Raziel said.
"That takes less effort than it looks," Ishtar said. "And really, I could have caught the girl myself."
"The fact remains that you did not."
"I would have, if you had not set out before I awoke." She knelt next to the corpse and felt for the corpse's neck. "But thank you."
"We will require your strength."
Ishtar's talons paused in the corpse's flesh. "Yes..." She tilted her head down. "More than you know."
"What? This circumstance will not be met with an easy resolution?"
Her smile was almost an apology. "Does it ever?"
********************************************************
Raziel twisted around until his back let out a satisfying crack. The grim excitement he always felt tingled through his flesh, but it was not the seething rush he had felt during his last encounter with Kain. Thinking too much of the future, perhaps. Or the fact that Ishtar seemed as untouched and impassive as ever.
"The years have not been kind to this place," Ishtar said.
Raziel turned his eyes to the ruins of Avernus. Perhaps "ruins" was too strong a word. It looked more like a field of mud pockmarked with pieces of stone that had once been the foundations of houses. He couldn't see how far the desolation lay; although the smokestacks could not hurl smoke this far from the pillars, natural clouds served to block the moon. Not a pleasing reward at the end of a long and gloomy journey, he reflected.
"Though," Raziel said aloud, "they have not touched the cathedral."
That building, at least, wasn't hard to make out. Thought its outer walls had long since fallen, Avernus Cathedral sstood as an angular silhouette in the darkness. Centuries ago, as Kain's lieutenant, Raziel had come here on a kind of pilgrimage. It was the holy place where Kain had found the Soul Reaver. Then, as now, it showed no sign of aging.
Raziel turned to his daughter, who was picking mud off the edge of her wing. "Can you foresee what will come of this?"
Ishtar lowered her wing, or made some movement- her ebony skin blended too well with the darkness. "Yes. And no. You will face a great enemy."
For several moments, she did not continue.
"I cannot see the outcome."
He blinked at her, then gave a small shrug. "Ah, the only purpose served by destiny is to perplex those in the present. I will do without it."
"Just you?"
"I have already been killed by Kain. Between the two of us, only one can die."
"I'll be alright."
"Tempting destiny, are we?"
"Raziel, I *will* be alright."
He turned aside in case his glowing eyes betrayed a hint of amusement. "Very well. Kain will have to deal with two Razielim."
But he had second thoughts when they entered the cathedral. It wasn't so much the fire-and-brimstone carvings on the walls, or that the torches were burning as if in welcome. More of a... presence? He glanced at Ishtar, and if he didn't know better he'd say she was agitated. Her tail undulated like an angry snake while her wings might as well have been flaps of stone attached to her back. Her head twitched in his direction; she knew he was looking at her. But her muscles remained tense.
"I can go alone," Raziel said quietly.
She slowly shook her head. "It's not that, Raziel." She hesitantly stpped toward a low doorway half-hidden in the shadows. Before he could reply she spoke again. "Through there."
Blue light sprang onto the stone as the Soul Reaver coiled down Raziel's arm. It should be unsettling, to have such a powerful creature as Ishtar nervous at his side. So his mind insisted. He shoved the thought away without a hint of hesitation.
The room was not the huge chamber he had anticipated, but a small closet that held only a single object: a platform colored orange and white and raised slightly off the floor. Raziel glanced at Ishtar, who stood silently in the low doorway, waiting. Kain would die, he reminded himself. The simple truth. Later he would consider his vampiric daughter.
Raziel stepped onto the platform and the room blurred, then ran off his vision like water. He blinked and a different room formed around the platform, much dimmer and larger than the first, so the stone walls vanished overhead into darkness. He lifted his right arm so the light of the Soul Reaver cast the shadows farther back, but still he could not make out the ceiling.
His footsteps echoed as Raziel stepped off the teleporter, whose soft glow died when he no longer touched it. The smell of brimstone filled the room, and Raziel again became aware of the barely-felt presence, but here it was heavy with malevolence.
All this faded from his mind when the Soul Reaver illuminated something that was not made of stone. Something with white hair.
"Kept waiting once again," Kain said. "Will you make a habit of this, Raziel?"
Raziel raised the wraith blade. "Be assured it will not occur again."
"I'm quite impressed. You're beginning to display the foresight of your daughter- even when she is wholly absent from your thoughts."
Raziel cut him off with a vicious stab. In a blur he barely registered, Kain ducked aside and delivered a quick slash across Raziel's temple, tearing off a clump of dark blue hair. He smirked as if the blow was more to humiliate Raziel than damage him. Raziel turned with a backhand slash, but Kain had stepped out of the reach of the blade. His smile was infuriating.
"Simply captivating. Regretfully, much as I admire the ardor you hold for your part, this is not how the play unfolds."
Raziel saw the blade flying toward him and had time only to recognize it. Kain had used it against humans when he was in a lazy mood- it shaved off their skin and left behind nothing but a skinless corpse. Then it ripped into Raziel's flesh and he could not find the voice to scream. It tore through him, danced to one limb just as he registered pain in another, and stole breath he did not know he had. He fell to his knees and could not resist when Kain dug his claws into Raziel's hair and yanked his head backwards.
"To have come all this way, boy, and not even listen to what your father has to say. Tsk tsk."
Raziel's eyes flared. "Damn you."
Having been robbed of the wraith blade, Raziel lashed out with his bare claws. Kain smiled indulgently as his son's talons scraped against his chest like wooden pegs against rock. The master vampire lifted Raziel by the hair and slammed his head into the wall. He did not speak until Raziel stopped struggling and glared into his eyes.
"Perhaps you are not aware, Raziel, of the vast number of possibilities through which I have sifted to arrive at this moment. Your inflated indignation is merely one of the innumerable consequences. You cannot begin to conceive how many others I have wrought that you and I might convene at this moment. Yet you, in your feeble mewling for retribution, unwittingly undermine the purpose for which I have labored through millennia." Kain's grip tightened, straining Raziel's neck backward."Do show a glimmer of your former reasonableness."
The soul reaver twisted his head until Kain could see all of his glaring white eyes. Whatever retort he had in mind, however, died in his throat as Ishtar stepped into view behind Kain. It was a rare moment where her eye sockets were staring directly into Raziel's.
"I ask the same," she said. "Raziel, your future can take two paths. We can show you."
Raziel dropped his glare from Kain to his daughter. "You would ally with him?"
"We are axles on the same purgatorial wheel," Kain said, "of which you are the hub." He relinquished his grip and stepped backward toward Ishtar.
Raziel flexed his claws. "Your riddles are trying, Kain."
"Allow me to elucidate." Kain stepped backward again, sweeping his arm in a grand gesture. "You are the heir to the empire I have constructed. An unlikely savior to restore the balance of two stagnating worlds."
"That is not elucidation."
"The true explanation is much longer," Ishtar said. "To the beginning of our kind. If I may- there were two gods, long ago: the Elder God of the underworld, and the Younger God of the material world. We, vampires, are the creation of the Younger God, in his vain attempt to create something that would never fall into the realm of the Elder."
Raziel managed to force himself to stop glaring at Kain. "An immortal."
"Yes. For His pride, the Younger was imprisoned in a device meant to channel His energy without releasing Him." Ishtar gave him a significant look. "The Pillars. As a final mockery, they would be guarded by humans."
"You are privy to all this?"
"Of course. I have seen it, over and over. But back to your explanation... the pillars were never meant to be served by vampires. That defeated their purpose. When Kain became Guardian... I suppose you could say, the pillars began to leak, and the freed essence found a host in which to manifest itself. In you."
"Your wings, Raziel," Kain said in answer to his incredulous look.
"Ah yes." Raziel turned to Kain. "How could I forget."
"-and without you, the Pillars needed a new... a new vessel, a host," Ishtar said. "So they looked to those with your blood."
"They were so intent on possessing me?"
"Yes, I don't know why. Perhaps they took a shine to you- or you answered a request."
In his mind, the oroborus coiled around him in empty space. Raziel's eyes widened as the revelation slowly took shape- the dream, centuries and days ago, the snake that grew from the pillars.
The one snake that devoured the other.
Ishtar seemed not to notice his reaction. "The gift... was an unwelcome evolution," she was saying. "For some, it was a power barely contained within them. For many, it was an untamed force that destroyed them from the inside."
"Much like the Turelim," Kain added helpfully. "Your divinity spreads like an infection."
"All this is very engaging," Raziel said, "but I fail to see what it is you desire of me."
"It is simple enough," Kain said. Raziel did not like his quiet smirk at all.
Surprisingly, Kain did not seem to mind when Ishtar cut in. "Getting to that, Raziel. You might... have noticed that Nosgoth is not what you remember. Your execution had greater repercussions than you think."
The narrowing of Raziel's eyes could have been mistaken for deep thought. It was less in reaction to what his daughter said and more to how she said it. Your execution. Barely a ripple in her tone.
"And these would be?"
"You have greater faculties of reason than this," Kain said with a note of disapproval.
"Perhaps my faculties could be put to better use than deciphering your riddles."
"Raziel," Ishtar cut in again. "The Younger God was part of you when you were thrown into the Abyss. Your death did more than leave us fatherless. It led to a greater disruption in His creation, which is all of the material world. Like the ancient murder of Ariel, doubled."
"Can you imagine the fractures this generated in the empire?" Kain said. "We were to become demi-gods, each a solitary reflection of His greater ascendancy. With His passing from His creation, we were left like forsaken children on a path that held no objective. The clans degenerated into monstrosities for which the Younger would have no recognition."
"And you conveniently evaded this degeneration?"
"The role of a Pillar Guardian is, I find, a role of convenience."
"To leave aside our tangents," Ishtar said, "suffice to say, Nosgoth is not in the best of states. The entire material world is dying, and the underworld is sick with hunger. Even the Elder God has met with the decay that strangles both worlds. There is no passage of souls from one realm to the other."
"And, at last, we arrive at your role in this horribly mangled equation," Kain said. "There is not one soul in Nosgoth, in this world or the next, with the ability to salvage this land... except you."
"What?" Raziel said.
"Do abandon the façade of idiocy, Raziel, it is not fitting of a Dark God. You see, there is the dormant seed of the Younger God within your soul, and yet the wraith world is your natural home, and your physical body is merely a temporary shell which you can abandon at will. It is such a unique manifestation of both realms, and as such, the only fitting instrument for Nosgoth's salvation."
"You wish me to become a god."
"Essentially, yes."
"You are mad."
"Think, Raziel," Ishtar said. "Is it so hard to believe? What do you suppose I am, but a substitute for what you would have been?"
Raziel turned a cold stare toward Kain. "If that is true, why did you execute me?"
"Such eagerness to idenfity me as an indiscriminate killer. No, Raziel, there is a sound rationale behind my actions. Had you accepted the Younger God then, you would become His incarnation, greater than the combined powers of myself and your brothers. And the Elder would be greater still. The wasteland He would wreak is worse still than the corruption pervading this age, but His could not be rectified."
The soul reaver had no more to say. The world Kain and Ishtar had abruptly thrust him into made no sense. He could find no words to defy them... only a growing sense of rage.
"Quite an inspiring speech," Raziel said. "Spoken with the fervor of one who almost believes his own words. But as always, Kain, the delusional excuses you hurl about are hardly valid. You do not deceive me with your own desperate attempts to save your crumbling empire. I almost killed you once... could it be you fear a second attempt?"
Kain had an unreadable expression. "You were fooled by a bit of silence I substituted for my 'soul'?" He laughed, his voice cold. "Did you fail to notice the disappearance of your Elder from your thoughts?"
Kain turned his back and began walking toward the other end of the chamber. Raziel and Ishtar exchanged glances before slowly following.
"Oh, I had speeches," the Emperor of Nosgoth said, his head half-turned to address those behind him. "The first time I foresaw you delivering that whining diatribe, I responded with my own, describing how every action you now condemn- your execution, the eradication of Clan Razielim- was calculated that this crucial moment may come to pass, to bring you to the cusp of godhood, surely the greatest offering a father could bestow upon his offspring. But, you would rather I make amends."
Kain climbed a short stairway that led to a small ledge built against the wall. Only one object rested on the ledge: a black, crudely-carved coffin made of obsidian that shone in the dim light. He reached into the coffin and withdrew two white, stick-like objects, one in each hand. He turned, holding these gifts out to Raziel.
Wingbones.
"These are yours," Kain said.
"You!... twisted dog...!"
The ancient vampire descended the stairs, still holding out the wingbones. "This is not a poor attempt to mock you. Consume them, as if they were liberated souls. You will see."
For a moment Raziel didn't move. When he did, it was to yank the cowl from his face with an angry tug.
He could not have prepared for Kain's gift. The familiar spark rose from the wingbones like ethereal dust, but it was not green like the ordinary souls of vampires and humans. Rather than emitting light, the spark seemed to devour it. He hesitated before drawing the spark in, letting it feed his hunger.
His muscles seemed to evaporate. He couldn't move or speak, only wait as something dark and strangely beautiful threaded through his body. It was familiar. It was the oroborus, he thought absurdly. It was the sudden itching and then tearing at his back as familiar bones grew again from his ruined body.
Raziel turned his head. Ishtar was staring in his direction, a small smile on her blind face. He turned further and new-grown wings greeted his eyes. They were no longer the delicate appendages that Kain had destroyed. They looked more like a second set of arms, the skin a blue dark enough to be black, with a black membrane stretched between the widely-spaced fingers. He watched his right wing bend and straighten, thinking of the boneless flap that had been there moments before. It was so hard to think of as his own.
Kain gripped his shoulder. "Only a piece, Raziel," he said, his perpetual scowl a touch softer than usual. "Think on what I have asked you."
Raziel nodded at him numbly before turning to Ishtar. She had still not elected to use her sight. "Go on, my lord," she said with a soft smile.
Without speaking, Raziel turned and left the cathedral to test his new wings.
Oi! It's been awhile. Sorry, I hope I haven't lost all of you.
Well, Sylvia Plath once said that if she couldn't make a cathedral out of a poem, she'd make a footstool. She was a very wise woman. So put on your Scattered Ashes gear once again- the uber-plotty chapter has emerged at last, and we march on! *melodramatic swell of violins*
*/AUTHOR'S INSERT*
9- Children of a Lesser God
Raziel bounced the corpse over his shoulder with a grunt. It really had been amusing to see the lost human look at him with relief, then remember that she was supposed to fear him. There had been more traffic than usual through the clanlands, which made the kill more awkward. Not that the humans would have been warm and welcoming to him anyway. But, they did seem to be refugees from the human citadel. Had Kain told the truth? Were the humans leaving for Avernus?
He grinned inwardly. More food for Ishtar if they were, and more to celebrate with once Kain was finally gone.
The soul reaver scratched at the back of his neck with his free hand, wincing as his claw caught on an exposed tendon. His life, if it could be described as such, had taken an interesting turn in the past few days, one he did not quite comprehend. Too many emotions rose with the review of every event that had occurred in the past while. Kain was alive; at least that was simple. Raziel hated him, and tonight he would be dead. The hatred should not have been a comfort. But it was, compared to his reaction to the discovery of Ishtar. She was his daughter, or had been in another life. And now as then she was a vampire, the creature he had spent all of his new existence hunting down and killing. He did not want to consider the implication any further.
And the humans. What of them? As if in answer, the corpse slung across his shoulder suddenly lurched off-balance. Raziel tossed a hanging limb onto his back, ignoring the wet pop, and readjusted the awkward weight. His mind barely skipped a beat and wholly ignored the corpse flopping like a batch of undercooked noodles. His life as a vampire was hardly noble. He led his life as a soul reaver purely for revenge. But a human life, after immortality? Perhaps the unborn of the human race were the luckiest of them all.
Raziel tilted his head, automatically softening his footfalls when he heard the voice. Dusk had faded into night; Ishtar must have awoken. Her faint voice rose and fell in a tune he remembered from long ago.
"...parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme..."
He turned the corner of a ruined wall to find two enormous wings spanning the width of the corridor. Ishtar seemed to be in the midst of balancing and slowly rotating on the tip of her tail.
"...remember me to one who lives there..."
Her tail uncoiled and her wings stretched upward. It seemed all of her weight balanced on the dark blue hairs standing rigidly straight at the end of her tail.
"...she once was a true love of mine."
Raziel let his burden collapse to the ground with a thunk-splat. On hearing this, Ishtar's tail fell into a loose coil while her wings folded tightly into her back. When her hooves touched the ground, it seemed as if her body suddenly remembered that it had weight and could not rest on the hair of her tail.
"It seems your fatigue is short-lived," Raziel said.
"That takes less effort than it looks," Ishtar said. "And really, I could have caught the girl myself."
"The fact remains that you did not."
"I would have, if you had not set out before I awoke." She knelt next to the corpse and felt for the corpse's neck. "But thank you."
"We will require your strength."
Ishtar's talons paused in the corpse's flesh. "Yes..." She tilted her head down. "More than you know."
"What? This circumstance will not be met with an easy resolution?"
Her smile was almost an apology. "Does it ever?"
********************************************************
Raziel twisted around until his back let out a satisfying crack. The grim excitement he always felt tingled through his flesh, but it was not the seething rush he had felt during his last encounter with Kain. Thinking too much of the future, perhaps. Or the fact that Ishtar seemed as untouched and impassive as ever.
"The years have not been kind to this place," Ishtar said.
Raziel turned his eyes to the ruins of Avernus. Perhaps "ruins" was too strong a word. It looked more like a field of mud pockmarked with pieces of stone that had once been the foundations of houses. He couldn't see how far the desolation lay; although the smokestacks could not hurl smoke this far from the pillars, natural clouds served to block the moon. Not a pleasing reward at the end of a long and gloomy journey, he reflected.
"Though," Raziel said aloud, "they have not touched the cathedral."
That building, at least, wasn't hard to make out. Thought its outer walls had long since fallen, Avernus Cathedral sstood as an angular silhouette in the darkness. Centuries ago, as Kain's lieutenant, Raziel had come here on a kind of pilgrimage. It was the holy place where Kain had found the Soul Reaver. Then, as now, it showed no sign of aging.
Raziel turned to his daughter, who was picking mud off the edge of her wing. "Can you foresee what will come of this?"
Ishtar lowered her wing, or made some movement- her ebony skin blended too well with the darkness. "Yes. And no. You will face a great enemy."
For several moments, she did not continue.
"I cannot see the outcome."
He blinked at her, then gave a small shrug. "Ah, the only purpose served by destiny is to perplex those in the present. I will do without it."
"Just you?"
"I have already been killed by Kain. Between the two of us, only one can die."
"I'll be alright."
"Tempting destiny, are we?"
"Raziel, I *will* be alright."
He turned aside in case his glowing eyes betrayed a hint of amusement. "Very well. Kain will have to deal with two Razielim."
But he had second thoughts when they entered the cathedral. It wasn't so much the fire-and-brimstone carvings on the walls, or that the torches were burning as if in welcome. More of a... presence? He glanced at Ishtar, and if he didn't know better he'd say she was agitated. Her tail undulated like an angry snake while her wings might as well have been flaps of stone attached to her back. Her head twitched in his direction; she knew he was looking at her. But her muscles remained tense.
"I can go alone," Raziel said quietly.
She slowly shook her head. "It's not that, Raziel." She hesitantly stpped toward a low doorway half-hidden in the shadows. Before he could reply she spoke again. "Through there."
Blue light sprang onto the stone as the Soul Reaver coiled down Raziel's arm. It should be unsettling, to have such a powerful creature as Ishtar nervous at his side. So his mind insisted. He shoved the thought away without a hint of hesitation.
The room was not the huge chamber he had anticipated, but a small closet that held only a single object: a platform colored orange and white and raised slightly off the floor. Raziel glanced at Ishtar, who stood silently in the low doorway, waiting. Kain would die, he reminded himself. The simple truth. Later he would consider his vampiric daughter.
Raziel stepped onto the platform and the room blurred, then ran off his vision like water. He blinked and a different room formed around the platform, much dimmer and larger than the first, so the stone walls vanished overhead into darkness. He lifted his right arm so the light of the Soul Reaver cast the shadows farther back, but still he could not make out the ceiling.
His footsteps echoed as Raziel stepped off the teleporter, whose soft glow died when he no longer touched it. The smell of brimstone filled the room, and Raziel again became aware of the barely-felt presence, but here it was heavy with malevolence.
All this faded from his mind when the Soul Reaver illuminated something that was not made of stone. Something with white hair.
"Kept waiting once again," Kain said. "Will you make a habit of this, Raziel?"
Raziel raised the wraith blade. "Be assured it will not occur again."
"I'm quite impressed. You're beginning to display the foresight of your daughter- even when she is wholly absent from your thoughts."
Raziel cut him off with a vicious stab. In a blur he barely registered, Kain ducked aside and delivered a quick slash across Raziel's temple, tearing off a clump of dark blue hair. He smirked as if the blow was more to humiliate Raziel than damage him. Raziel turned with a backhand slash, but Kain had stepped out of the reach of the blade. His smile was infuriating.
"Simply captivating. Regretfully, much as I admire the ardor you hold for your part, this is not how the play unfolds."
Raziel saw the blade flying toward him and had time only to recognize it. Kain had used it against humans when he was in a lazy mood- it shaved off their skin and left behind nothing but a skinless corpse. Then it ripped into Raziel's flesh and he could not find the voice to scream. It tore through him, danced to one limb just as he registered pain in another, and stole breath he did not know he had. He fell to his knees and could not resist when Kain dug his claws into Raziel's hair and yanked his head backwards.
"To have come all this way, boy, and not even listen to what your father has to say. Tsk tsk."
Raziel's eyes flared. "Damn you."
Having been robbed of the wraith blade, Raziel lashed out with his bare claws. Kain smiled indulgently as his son's talons scraped against his chest like wooden pegs against rock. The master vampire lifted Raziel by the hair and slammed his head into the wall. He did not speak until Raziel stopped struggling and glared into his eyes.
"Perhaps you are not aware, Raziel, of the vast number of possibilities through which I have sifted to arrive at this moment. Your inflated indignation is merely one of the innumerable consequences. You cannot begin to conceive how many others I have wrought that you and I might convene at this moment. Yet you, in your feeble mewling for retribution, unwittingly undermine the purpose for which I have labored through millennia." Kain's grip tightened, straining Raziel's neck backward."Do show a glimmer of your former reasonableness."
The soul reaver twisted his head until Kain could see all of his glaring white eyes. Whatever retort he had in mind, however, died in his throat as Ishtar stepped into view behind Kain. It was a rare moment where her eye sockets were staring directly into Raziel's.
"I ask the same," she said. "Raziel, your future can take two paths. We can show you."
Raziel dropped his glare from Kain to his daughter. "You would ally with him?"
"We are axles on the same purgatorial wheel," Kain said, "of which you are the hub." He relinquished his grip and stepped backward toward Ishtar.
Raziel flexed his claws. "Your riddles are trying, Kain."
"Allow me to elucidate." Kain stepped backward again, sweeping his arm in a grand gesture. "You are the heir to the empire I have constructed. An unlikely savior to restore the balance of two stagnating worlds."
"That is not elucidation."
"The true explanation is much longer," Ishtar said. "To the beginning of our kind. If I may- there were two gods, long ago: the Elder God of the underworld, and the Younger God of the material world. We, vampires, are the creation of the Younger God, in his vain attempt to create something that would never fall into the realm of the Elder."
Raziel managed to force himself to stop glaring at Kain. "An immortal."
"Yes. For His pride, the Younger was imprisoned in a device meant to channel His energy without releasing Him." Ishtar gave him a significant look. "The Pillars. As a final mockery, they would be guarded by humans."
"You are privy to all this?"
"Of course. I have seen it, over and over. But back to your explanation... the pillars were never meant to be served by vampires. That defeated their purpose. When Kain became Guardian... I suppose you could say, the pillars began to leak, and the freed essence found a host in which to manifest itself. In you."
"Your wings, Raziel," Kain said in answer to his incredulous look.
"Ah yes." Raziel turned to Kain. "How could I forget."
"-and without you, the Pillars needed a new... a new vessel, a host," Ishtar said. "So they looked to those with your blood."
"They were so intent on possessing me?"
"Yes, I don't know why. Perhaps they took a shine to you- or you answered a request."
In his mind, the oroborus coiled around him in empty space. Raziel's eyes widened as the revelation slowly took shape- the dream, centuries and days ago, the snake that grew from the pillars.
The one snake that devoured the other.
Ishtar seemed not to notice his reaction. "The gift... was an unwelcome evolution," she was saying. "For some, it was a power barely contained within them. For many, it was an untamed force that destroyed them from the inside."
"Much like the Turelim," Kain added helpfully. "Your divinity spreads like an infection."
"All this is very engaging," Raziel said, "but I fail to see what it is you desire of me."
"It is simple enough," Kain said. Raziel did not like his quiet smirk at all.
Surprisingly, Kain did not seem to mind when Ishtar cut in. "Getting to that, Raziel. You might... have noticed that Nosgoth is not what you remember. Your execution had greater repercussions than you think."
The narrowing of Raziel's eyes could have been mistaken for deep thought. It was less in reaction to what his daughter said and more to how she said it. Your execution. Barely a ripple in her tone.
"And these would be?"
"You have greater faculties of reason than this," Kain said with a note of disapproval.
"Perhaps my faculties could be put to better use than deciphering your riddles."
"Raziel," Ishtar cut in again. "The Younger God was part of you when you were thrown into the Abyss. Your death did more than leave us fatherless. It led to a greater disruption in His creation, which is all of the material world. Like the ancient murder of Ariel, doubled."
"Can you imagine the fractures this generated in the empire?" Kain said. "We were to become demi-gods, each a solitary reflection of His greater ascendancy. With His passing from His creation, we were left like forsaken children on a path that held no objective. The clans degenerated into monstrosities for which the Younger would have no recognition."
"And you conveniently evaded this degeneration?"
"The role of a Pillar Guardian is, I find, a role of convenience."
"To leave aside our tangents," Ishtar said, "suffice to say, Nosgoth is not in the best of states. The entire material world is dying, and the underworld is sick with hunger. Even the Elder God has met with the decay that strangles both worlds. There is no passage of souls from one realm to the other."
"And, at last, we arrive at your role in this horribly mangled equation," Kain said. "There is not one soul in Nosgoth, in this world or the next, with the ability to salvage this land... except you."
"What?" Raziel said.
"Do abandon the façade of idiocy, Raziel, it is not fitting of a Dark God. You see, there is the dormant seed of the Younger God within your soul, and yet the wraith world is your natural home, and your physical body is merely a temporary shell which you can abandon at will. It is such a unique manifestation of both realms, and as such, the only fitting instrument for Nosgoth's salvation."
"You wish me to become a god."
"Essentially, yes."
"You are mad."
"Think, Raziel," Ishtar said. "Is it so hard to believe? What do you suppose I am, but a substitute for what you would have been?"
Raziel turned a cold stare toward Kain. "If that is true, why did you execute me?"
"Such eagerness to idenfity me as an indiscriminate killer. No, Raziel, there is a sound rationale behind my actions. Had you accepted the Younger God then, you would become His incarnation, greater than the combined powers of myself and your brothers. And the Elder would be greater still. The wasteland He would wreak is worse still than the corruption pervading this age, but His could not be rectified."
The soul reaver had no more to say. The world Kain and Ishtar had abruptly thrust him into made no sense. He could find no words to defy them... only a growing sense of rage.
"Quite an inspiring speech," Raziel said. "Spoken with the fervor of one who almost believes his own words. But as always, Kain, the delusional excuses you hurl about are hardly valid. You do not deceive me with your own desperate attempts to save your crumbling empire. I almost killed you once... could it be you fear a second attempt?"
Kain had an unreadable expression. "You were fooled by a bit of silence I substituted for my 'soul'?" He laughed, his voice cold. "Did you fail to notice the disappearance of your Elder from your thoughts?"
Kain turned his back and began walking toward the other end of the chamber. Raziel and Ishtar exchanged glances before slowly following.
"Oh, I had speeches," the Emperor of Nosgoth said, his head half-turned to address those behind him. "The first time I foresaw you delivering that whining diatribe, I responded with my own, describing how every action you now condemn- your execution, the eradication of Clan Razielim- was calculated that this crucial moment may come to pass, to bring you to the cusp of godhood, surely the greatest offering a father could bestow upon his offspring. But, you would rather I make amends."
Kain climbed a short stairway that led to a small ledge built against the wall. Only one object rested on the ledge: a black, crudely-carved coffin made of obsidian that shone in the dim light. He reached into the coffin and withdrew two white, stick-like objects, one in each hand. He turned, holding these gifts out to Raziel.
Wingbones.
"These are yours," Kain said.
"You!... twisted dog...!"
The ancient vampire descended the stairs, still holding out the wingbones. "This is not a poor attempt to mock you. Consume them, as if they were liberated souls. You will see."
For a moment Raziel didn't move. When he did, it was to yank the cowl from his face with an angry tug.
He could not have prepared for Kain's gift. The familiar spark rose from the wingbones like ethereal dust, but it was not green like the ordinary souls of vampires and humans. Rather than emitting light, the spark seemed to devour it. He hesitated before drawing the spark in, letting it feed his hunger.
His muscles seemed to evaporate. He couldn't move or speak, only wait as something dark and strangely beautiful threaded through his body. It was familiar. It was the oroborus, he thought absurdly. It was the sudden itching and then tearing at his back as familiar bones grew again from his ruined body.
Raziel turned his head. Ishtar was staring in his direction, a small smile on her blind face. He turned further and new-grown wings greeted his eyes. They were no longer the delicate appendages that Kain had destroyed. They looked more like a second set of arms, the skin a blue dark enough to be black, with a black membrane stretched between the widely-spaced fingers. He watched his right wing bend and straighten, thinking of the boneless flap that had been there moments before. It was so hard to think of as his own.
Kain gripped his shoulder. "Only a piece, Raziel," he said, his perpetual scowl a touch softer than usual. "Think on what I have asked you."
Raziel nodded at him numbly before turning to Ishtar. She had still not elected to use her sight. "Go on, my lord," she said with a soft smile.
Without speaking, Raziel turned and left the cathedral to test his new wings.