URBAN NOSGOTHIC 2 : CALL TO ARMS

Chapter 8

Disclaimer: Legacy of Kain was created by Eidos.

*sighs* I'm losing it. If this chapter makes no sense I do apologise.

"Rhianna? Rhianna, can you hear me?"

"Rhianna, if you can hear me, please open your eyes."

"Good. Good. Hello, Rhianna, my name is Stephen. I'm a paramedic, okay? You have to stay awake. Keep looking at me."

Wow, Stephen is ugly.

"Good girl. We're taking you to hospital, you're going to be absolutely fine."

I mean it. He's got a spot on his chin the size of Gibraltar. What is it about paramedics that they always seem to look about fourteen years old…I must be getting old myself…

Wait.

Raziel.

"Rrrrraaaazzz…" I manage to say, and Stephen looks at me as if I'm a dog who's just performed a particularly clever trick. I try again. Raziel, where is Raziel? I have to talk to him…

"Rrraz-i-eeeell…"

Someone straps an oxygen mask over my mouth and nose.

And then of course my brain begins to co-ordinate with what my eyes and other senses have been telling me. This is not Nosgoth - last time I checked, Nosgoth had no paramedics. Or any medics, even. I am back again. London's lights surround me: the air is harsh and cold on my face.

What is happening to me? I think I'm starting to know how Raziel felt in Soul Reaver 2. Bouncing about through different places, different times. It's like having jet-lag, but constantly. That strange, dreaming unreality that comes upon travellers at 3 a.m. in some foreign land when everything is quiet and empty – the sense that you are not where or when you should be.

I wonder…no, it's far too ludicrous to think that this is Moebius' doing. I am nothing. I do not even belong in Nosgoth. There is no reason why….

…someone starts to wipe (iodine? Feels like acid) over the scrapes on my knees. I convulse, my cries of pain muffled behind the oxygen mask. Stephen is holding me still.

But you have only human strength, I feel like saying, I've been held and restrained by the strongest of vampires…

No. No time-streamer, no destiny. Not me. Not my problem. I am just doing a very normal, human thing, and having a breakdown. It's very simple. I will spend the rest of my days in a nice mental institution, talking to vampires that no-one else can see.

And this would have been a very nice, warm, fluffy fantasy to live out, but I can see armed police at the stairs of the Underground. They are terrified. Even from my prone position, I can see their fear in the set of their shoulders, the way one tugs at the straps on his riot gear. They shift their guns to firing position and wait. They haven't been told what they're preparing for, only that it is bad, very bad.

Kain must still be down there, in the station.

Vampires that no-one else can see….if only.

I start to struggle. I want off this stretcher. Kain – they don't know what they're dealing with – he could break all of these heavily armed police with a thought. A thought.

And they are going to shoot at him. He's going to get a lot worse than peeved if they do that.

I scrabble at Stephen's shirt. "Don't let them shoot him!" I manage, my voice echoey behind the mask.

"Is there a friend of yours still down there?" Stephen asks, and his eyes say if there is, your friend is dead…

I glare at him with all the force and panic I can muster.

"Do – not – shoot – him," I repeat. And then someone jabs a needle into my arm and I am lost to greyness again.

In the odd, fuzzy dreams that go with drugged sleep I hear a voice.

This is not unfamiliar, although usually it was Gary's voice, and it didn't sound quite so amused, or confidently calm.

I am not fully asleep, can't be, because there is pain, although a weak, feeble sort of pain, in my knees. But neither am I awake.

The room seems green, blue, grey. Warped and twisted. The IV drip stand at my side seems bent out of shape: the bed twists as if torn by huge hands.  The ceiling stretches away, oddly vaulted and seeming higher than before. Ugly mists swirl across the pristine hospital floor.

Things are different, while remaining the same. Why does this all look oddly familiar…?

And then the voice, all-pervading, seeming to invade every pore of my body and echo through my head at an aching volume, says:

"Where do you think you're going, little soul?"

The mists are rising.

"There's no escape…"

And then I remember, and I wake with a vast, invertebrate eye glaring at me inside my head.

The room is not green, or blue, or grey. It's that bland shade of magnolia that many public institutions seem to have adopted. The curtains and beds are decked out in orange, brown, and white.

All in all, it's very cheerful, if you're an easily pleased five-year-old.

My head feels as if it is about to come off, but otherwise I'm surprised to be feeling so calm. Must be the drugs. I glance up at the clock. Nearly four in the morning…I've lost about three hours.

A lot can happen in three hours.

Raziel must have restored the heart to Janos. Kain, trapped in the Angel Islington, could not have been there to intervene. Does Raziel now have the answers he sought so hard and for so long?

And what am I going to tell the police this time?

I could do with some answers for them, preferably ones that don't involve vampires and wraiths and exsanguinated bodies in the stairwell.

I seem to be alone in this ward. That's…unusual.

I can see a nurse through the glass window at the end of the room, and he is talking to a policeman. No – three policemen, a plainclothes one and two uniformed officers.

This is not a good sign.

Some people only have their life flash before their eyes once – before they die. I've seen mine so often it's like a matinee.  Showing twice an afternoon, three times on Saturdays.

I cannot help feeling small, so small.

How did someone so small, so worthless, become involved in something so big?

There's no escape…

I considered suicide. Of course I did. Once when I was a teenager, and again almost monthly, when I was with Gary. When I was a teenager, it was because I was angry at the world. Like Raziel, I felt that the world owed me something for the wrongs it had done me. And then later, older, it was because I knew that I was so small, so insignificant, that my death would mean nothing to anyone. I could not make a difference. The balance of the world would not be upset: the seasons would still turn: without me, things would not change. And death would bring me peace, an end. But I could never do it. I was too weak to face the possible pain.

Again, my thoughts turn to Raziel, and the weary way he walked into Janos's tomb. His pale eyes…

He has heard so much about his destiny, has been told so may times that he holds the fate of Nosgoth in his hands.

He is tired.

What will he do, if he finds out that his destiny is not what it seemed to be…?

The door at the end of the room opens, but I do not hear footsteps walking in.

I try to crane my neck, but it hurts too much and makes my head swim. I can sense someone is here. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Instinct will protect you if it can, but only if you listen to it. I try to stifle my own breath, my heartbeat, so I can listen…

Silence. Not even the sound of another's breathing. And yet still I know that I am no longer alone in the ward, and strapped to the IV as I am, I am helpless. I close my eyes, not wanting to see what approaches.

"Poor child…"

Smooth talons caress my bruised cheek, and I shudder.

"I had not forgotten you."

Janos, wings fully spread, stands on the air as if it were solid. Like this, he fills the room, makes it pale and shrink in comparison to his striking appearance. He becomes the only thing worth looking at. His eyes are strange, but sympathetic, filled with some desire I cannot identify – to help me, perhaps?

He smiles to see my eyes open, and he moves to slice the drip from my arm. He is taking me away. Just like before, rescued from hospital by vampires before any awkward questions can be asked. I really must not make a habit of this…

He lifts me and this time I do not struggle. For one thing, I do not have the strength, and for another, I do not want to anymore. I am willing to lose myself in my hallucinations forever, if it will only mean that the pain, the humiliation, goes away.

Janos lifts me with infinite care, turning my head in against his bicep and scooping my bandaged knees up over his other forearm. Now he is the room. He is all that remains of my fractured little world. All I can see is the cloth of his tunic, the vibrant blue of his body, the feathers. The cool of his skin feels good against my heated brow. And he even smells nice. The mustiness of death is gone from him: he smells like memories, like good summers long ago when I was a child and still happy.

"We must go now," he says, and again I'm not inclined to argue with him. I stare up into the arch of his wings as he glides forward.

Funny. I must be still dizzy with the drugs.

I don't remember those gleaming red and gold feathers in his wings before…