--Amanda--
Deep in the countryside of Soran's homeland, there was yet another hidden fortress. I was no longer surprised that they were scattered across the planet just as they were in Kain's Nosgoth. Deep inside its catacombs, ill-guarded by young fledglings which at Soran's command were quite easily dispatched.
"Will you be able to understand the machinations of this contraption?" Soran inquired as we stood, the three of us, in the room with the ancient machinery. It took some doing getting inside, for there were a number of complicated locks. Kain was an expert, of course, and we had it opened within a half an hour. Now in the great room, through which we could see the stars (the room itself cleverly hidden inside an old monastery). The walls were carved with the familiar depictions of prophecy that showed the faceless girl and Raziel, the black-haired man with the glowing eyes. Kain didn't ask about them, for I had told him much about these cracked and forgotten whispers of death.
"Amanda's magic may reveal the secrets of this place. You may no longer be needed," Kain replied dismissively. But then the two vampires clasped each other's hands and looked into each other's eyes, sharing a Whisper that I couldn't hear. Then they parted, Soran kissing each of Kain's aged, dark cheeks and he strode away with his footsteps dying into the darkness.
I knew afterward what I had been made to do. I looked into the palm of my hand, which bore Kain's lord symbol. I rubbed my nose against it gently and then rose my hands to the air. I didn't need any components to do this. Just lots of faith, plenty of power, and some blood.
Kain stood by and watched with his arms folded, his gold eyes glittering in the lights that fell from around me. I wore the simplest clothing we could find, because it wouldn't be cool if I showed up in Nosgoth in sneakers, baggy carpenter's pants, and a low-hanging blouse and a gold Rolex?
The floor shook; the Nosgothian figures began to swirl and pulsate in the floor and along the tall arches of the portal, and in the direct center of the arches there was a light that flickered and burned.
Once the portal was started, and my powers began to drain on my energy, I offered my fledgling blood. The liquid spilled through the floor, following a deeply beveled track that circled around in a wicked spiral that looked like the golden clasp that Kain used to wear to clip his clan banner together.
He wore his old attire again, the Reaver across his back glowing brightly with each of the Balance Symbols plugged into it. I was glad to see him like that, because I finally saw him for who he was - the Scion of Balance, the one who was going to save Nosgoth. Would I be there by his side when it happened? I would never go home, and no one here would miss me. All I had was Kain, and as I watched him approach the portal and stop for me, holding out his hand, I realized he was the one man I would love as my father as long as I lived. Not some faceless name who sent child support every week, but Kain! He stood proudly in the changing light and turbulent wind coming through the portal, cold and clean as outer space.
I grabbed his hand and clung to it tightly, my eyes squeezing shut. The portal was churning like an angry cauldron of blood soup. Kain pulled me confidently toward it, and I held the image of Nosgoth as Kain described it in my mind as hard as I could. If I didn't, we might be cast to the spatial winds and pretty much lost forever.
--Kain--
The pull of space was familiar, not unlike the irreversible pull of time. I held the image of the pillars in my mind for as long as I could. That last brief glimpse I had seen after 'healing' them with the Reaver, before I had tumbled through the portal to this hellish modern world. Focusing on a single point of light, we flew through the darkness holding fast to each other. It did us no good. The journey was hard, and the technology and magic far too old and broken-down to keep us safe. Forces of nature beyond my comprehension buffeted us back and forth, bearing us still toward that light, but threatening to tear us apart.
I clutched her hand tightly, but she was bleeding and it made my grasp slip. She was screaming something over and over again, the whites of her eyes blazing so intensely they blinded me. Still the winds ravaged us, throwing invisible projectiles through our bodies, spilling our blood which spun out into the infinite like red tornadoes. One more burst of energy like that--
And we were split apart. I watched her fall from me (or rise - I lost any and all sense of direction), screaming and calling my name, and finally, as the magic emptied me on a solitary rump of grass and leaves, another word echoing on the spatial winds. It sounded like 'father'.
--Amanda--
I was lost for awhile. My breath gusted out of me with one final buffet of sonic wind, until I crashed through a grove of trees that stopped short in front of a huge door. I bashed my head off a rock and howled with pain, rolling to a stop against a wooden plank. A metal pull-switch about three feet high stood upon it, connected to some hidden mechanism inside the ground. I was in so much pain I didn't notice any of these things until later.
I rolled back and forth, habitually curled into a ball with my hands curved over the back of my head. I sat up slowly, swallowing my own blood to keep from throwing it up. Finally, I looked around. My vision was blurred and all I saw were tall, double-images of dark, vertical objects that poked into the sky. Then slowly, painfully, my vision focused.
Then I looked around. Kain! I lost him! He was with me in that... whatever-you-call-it, the worm-hole, the magic zoomer thing. God, I couldn't think straight to save my life. It was a good thing I didn't have to save my life at that moment, come to think of it. It was night and the moon and stars were as unfamiliar to me as the trees I saw. They looked a little like pines. But where was Kain?
"Kain!!" I shrieked desperately, my voice echoing from the hills. I felt absolutely alone and I didn't like it. Not one bit. "KAAAAIN!!!" I crawled forward on my hands and knees, my pants already scuffed up from rolling across the ground. I bit my cheek hard, shivering. I was afflicted by thirst and alone. Was this even Nosgoth?
I struggled like a newborn to my feet, cursing under my breath that I should be so weak already. Finally upright, I looked around me one last time. Kain was nowhere to be found. I was alone. Really alone. Mom had forgotten me long ago, and Kain was either dead now or lost to some other world. It didn't occur to me he was alive and well somewhere here in Nosgoth... but my grief was too great for me to see around. I could not fathom other possibilities or perceive other notions around its great bulk. I conveyed myself with a numbing sort of understanding to the switch and pulled it while staring at the door.
Something compelled me to do it. Maybe logic did not abandon me in my time of madness. I felt wicked to be here, out of place, an outsider that did not belong in every sense of the word. But when I pulled that switch, I came to the conclusion that if I stayed, I would grow weaker until I couldn't move any more and then die a slow, painful death. If I kept moving, I might be able to find some nourishment... somewhere...
"Father," I whispered, a tear rolling down my cheek. The rising door finally made a loud, demanding sound that jarred me out of my morbid thoughts. I walked toward the door, spotting something through a dense fog ahead of that. A tangle of vines and greenery wreathed my path like ceremonial decoration. That, at least, was the only sign that I felt accepted.
--Kain--
The winds conveyed me brutally through the darkness, tossing me against a brick wall and through it, casting me down into hell in a cloud of dust and debris that so thoroughly blinded me that I had no time to establish 'up' and 'down' quite yet. I heard the word she had called with all of her soul echoed back at me, mocking me, while coils of burning hot energy circled around my body and spread over the ground where I had fallen. An egg-shaped ceiling burst overhead, marred with cracks and decay, but still impressing the viewer with an image of an angelic figure, with wings out-stretched to deal judgment or salvation.
A groan of despair pulled itself out of my lips like an invasive parasite, just now escaping its predestined host. I felt my body sink deeper as I relaxed, relenting to the pain that was searing through me. But my closed eyes only revealed to me how she looked when my grasp slipped. She looked terrified and betrayed at once. My talons closed against my palms and bit deeply.
This chapel was probably the last whole building dedicated to a dead religion my predecessors had accorded. Ironic that it should break my 'fall' and rescue me from death, isn't it? I know what you're thinking - that this is the end, and Amanda will die alone just like she always thought she would.
How little you know about me!
If you think for one moment of your pathetic mortal lives that I would let such a thing happen... then what would the next story be about?
So it was I lifted my body out of the rubble with a grunt of determination. I checked the Reaver, relieved to see it lying in the dust nearby. I picked it up and brushed the grit from the unbent steel. Raziel was soul-starved and I was bloodthirsty and no better equipped to compensate for either condition than in any journey on which I had embarked. But I had a different journey now - it was not for myself that I traveled, nor for any personal gain or to save the world. My task now was solely set - I would save my daughter, oh, most definitely.