URBAN NOSGOTHIC 2 : CALL TO ARMS
Chapter 4
Disclaimer: Legacy of Kain created by Eidos & Crystal Dynamics.
Once again, thankyou so much for all the kind reviews and emails encouraging me! ^_^ Proper review responses next chapter.
When I open my eyes again it is still dark.
For a moment I toy with the idea that I am blind, but as my eyes adjust to the gloom I realise that no, I'm just in some very large, rather cold, grey stone room. The little light there is seems dirty, yellowish, and flickering badly.
What is that smell…?
It smells partly of very aged stone, partly of snow, and partly of something else that for the moment I'm having trouble identifying. But overwhelmingly the place smells of smoke.
It's the torches on the walls I'm smelling.
My bathrobe catches roughly on the wall as I sit up fast, and a cloud of dislodged masonry dust makes me cough. Real dust. Real coughing.
But I'm not here. I can't be here.
Because if I'm here, if I'm really, really here, then I'm as good as dead. Or I'm finally completely insane. Either way, there is no longer any hope for me, no hope at all.
That other smell, the one I was having problems with? It's blood. Somewhere, very close to here, is a huge amount of blood.
Janos comes walking out of a nearby archway, carrying something in his hands. He kneels beside me, offers it. It's water. We would make a beautiful picture here, the two of us, with Janos outlined against the pale, dirty light, hands outstretched to tilt the water-dish against my lips. The Supplication Of The Ancient…
He seems eerily composed, and I wonder how long I've been lying here like a pile of crumpled rags. My skin is going almost blue with the cold, and my feet are already numb.
Maybe this is why Janos is the colour he is.
I let out a sub-hysterical giggle, almost drown myself on the water, and realise that Janos is watching every move I make like a hawk.
"Who are you?" he asks, and as this is probably the sanest question I'm going to get asked all day, I answer it. What does it matter who I am? I am a human in Nosgoth, a world breaking under the weight of its own corruption, and the place is full of vampires…
...or is it though?
I suddenly realise that although I can no longer be in much doubt where I am, I have absolutely no idea when I am.
Janos opens his mouth to ask another question, and it is at this moment that from outside we both hear a dull snapping sound, like a glacier in pain. His head turns alertly, and the look in his eyes does not do much to reassure me.
Janos knows something is coming, and he is not at all happy about it.
"Be still," is his only warning, and then…
Then he gets up and walks away, briskly, cloven feet clipping on the floor.
And I don't know what it is – whether it's the clothes he's wearing, something about the tense set of his wings, or the cold, or the sudden, swarming feeling of vertigo: but I know when I am.
"Let me take you somewhere safe…"
Janos has brought me to the safest place he knows, his Aerie, his Retreat.
Only I know that it isn't as safe as he could hope.
He leaves through a hefty set of doors that slam shut with a finality I cannot argue with. Those doors must be built for vampire strength – not in my wildest dreams could I move them.
Nor do I know why I would want to, but some instinct drives me to the doors, pushes me up against the wood.
If I were to escape, where would I go? If I didn't freeze to death out there, the Sarafan would most likely shoot me, being as they kill anything that moves in vampire territory these days.
And as I lean against the door, I force my teeth to cease their chattering. Quiet. Stay quiet. Be still, as Janos said.
It is in this quiet that I hear Raziel's voice on the other side of the door, and I know for certain that I will shortly be dead.
I listen as he speaks to Janos, and it's a conversation that I've replayed on my PS2 and in my head countless times.
"Raziel? My child, what have they done to you…?"
A part of me wants to pound on the wood: Raziel, it's me, remember me? But the fear, fortunately, stops me. Raziel would not be in the mood to receive me as graciously as he had before.
And besides, would he remember me at all?
I would have stayed, trapped in the bizarreness of my situation and strangely lulled by the familiarity of the words and voices from behind the door – but it turns out that this isn't the only door into this room.
Footsteps, heavy, booted feet on the stone. Clanking, loud enough to be heard miles off, as armoured bodies push through the halls of the Retreat.
Now I do pound on the door, wanting to cry out in warning like a child: The Sarafan are coming! The Sarafan are coming! My voice is useless, caught in my throat.
But Raziel is already out of range, unable to help, and Janos will meet his fate whether I am here or not. Heart thumping, I am frozen in plain view of the intruders as voices call out to each other beyond the second door. Angry male voices. And one, sounding triumphant.
They break in the door with some effort and swearing. They are a glorious if terrible sight, gleaming like a treasury, reds and golds, and weapons drawn. I'm not entirely sure which one of them it is who backhands me almost carelessly into the wall with a gauntleted arm. My mind flashes me a glimpse of dark, cruel eyes, and curved lips that seem familiar too.
Perhaps it was Sarafan Raziel who hit me, I'm in no condition to be sure. My lips are giving me so much pain they can only be split, and my cheekbone seems already to be swelling up to twice natural size. I bang my bare knees on the floor with force as I drop to the cold stone, and that pain is the last that I feel for some time…
Ugh.
I think it is the unbearable stickiness that brings me out of it.
I raise my head from the carpet with a snuffle, and half the carpet seems to come with me. My nose, lips and left cheek are clotted with my own blood, and it is drying in a glutinous mass on the floor where I have obviously been lying.
Ugh.
That ugly, threadbare fifties carpet can mean only one thing – I'm at home. I'm in my flat.
I am in too much pain to move, my knees inform me as I try to push myself groggily upright. So I lie still, breathing like a chronic asthmatic as the air forces itself past my bloodied nose and ruined lips, and take stock of my surroundings.
The first thing that catches my eye is the abandoned condom and the five-pound note, lying just a few inches away. That, at least, makes perfect sense. The drunk guy I was due to see must've got too close, knocked me out, I had a fun little Sarafan hallucination, and now…
…now I can see the next thing, and it's a black feather far too large to be from any bird. It's lying on top of one of my boots.
That settles it, and I have to get up. Right now.
The stench of Janos' stronghold still lingers in my sinuses, even behind the cloying blood. Was I…did I…?
That is. IT.
That is finally, unequivocably, IT.
I.
Need.
Help.
I grab the mattress with trembling hands and drag myself onto the bed, suppressing a yelp as my scraped knees knock the headboard. From here I can see the whole room, practically, and can survey the splintering on my door without despairing.
I shouldn't lose my deposit over that…
It is so tempting just to lie back here, to close my eyes, to make the world and all its confusing Nosgothian hallucinations go away. I don't care if I'm in denial, I like it here. Welcome to Denial, population 2,876 and still rising. But I know too much about injuries to give in to my exhaustion. If I lie here, my knees will stiffen until bending them is an agony far beyond endurance: my face will swell and become inflamed, infected, if I don't take care of these cuts.
And besides, there is probably a body in the stairwell that will require detailed explanation to the relevant authorities. And this time, I expect, with my record of mysterious disappearing boyfriends, I will be arrested.
I am surprising myself with how calm I'm being about all this. It's only a shame that when Kain abruptly sits up from the other side of the bed, looking even more gory than I am and gasping as if at the very edge of death, that I give in to the screaming again.