There is one question that strikes fear into the heart of every being who sires offspring. It is a question that every son of man, at some stage in his development will ask of a parent, an elder, a friend. It is not always phrased in the same way: "Who am I?"; "Why am I here?"; "What is my purpose?"; nevertheless, it is a question that cannot go unanswered. The answer is key to every individual's fundamental drive to establish his sense of self-awareness and self-worth, and to give his life meaning. Over the millennia, humankind has invented a plethora of convenient and self-serving responses: "Your purpose is to carry on the family line"; or "to fend for the others when I am gone"; or "to serve the gods", none of which excuses tend to appease those who have abandoned all mortal familial bonds, crossed the boundaries of death, and found out that the gods – if they do exist - are keeping extraordinarily quiet.

The child has yet to be born who has not asked that question at one time in its life, and my corpse-children were no exception.

"Who am I?" he asked, this one-time hunter and destroyer of my kind. The light of curiosity was burning fiercely in his eyes, kindled by his burgeoning intelligence, and the need to put a name and a function to the shell in which the mind resided. I did not doubt that all recollections of his past life were gone, lost irretrievably to the indifferent aeons. It had been hundreds of years that he had lain cold in his grave, and the memories stored in the brain had turned to dust with the grey matter. The intelligence that now inhabited the body, the soul that I had stolen from the underworld, had no tie or connection with the knight who had owned the corpse. If I had needed further proof of my newborns' amnesia, their willingness to turn on those they would once have called 'brothers-in-arms' soon put paid to any doubts.

While I had been considering my answer, I noticed that the six had finished their ravaging of the Sarafan bodies and had grouped together before me. All but two displayed that self-same curiosity that had caused their brother to break his silence and utter his first words. These stood a little way behind the other four, wringing their hands as though they could shake loose their claws, and picking at their teeth as though they found the structure of their mouths distasteful.

It is never easy, being born. Living young go from a place of warmth, seclusion and safety to the cold light, where their senses are battered by a million new stimuli, none of them welcome. So it is for the undead. These creatures' souls, set adrift in the Abyss for untold lifetimes had existed in a peaceful state of semi-awareness as beings of light and discorporate energy, their essence free of all restraints. Then to be rudely forced into corporeality, to be imprisoned within a cell of flesh and assaulted with all the crude and foul input of the baser senses, magnified and enhanced a thousandfold by their vampiric abilities...I could only imagine how unpleasant these first hours would be for them. I called the errant pair to order and addressed them all as one.

"Know now that I am Kain, and that I have called you from your eternal rest to serve me in the battles that are to come. Already you know this," I added, indicating the remains of the knights who had attacked us. "Though your bodies may seem weak and decrepit now, within the next phase of the moon, and provided you continue to feed as you did today, you will have strength beyond the imagining of mortal men. This I have given you, and as such, you owe your allegiance – your very existence - to me."

They shuffled uneasily, and those who had eyes and functioning lids blinked as rotted synapses fired and misfired, trying to make sense of my words.

"I have called you forth for a specific purpose. This land of Nosgoth is blighted and corrupt, its people weak, ripe for conquering, and this you will do. You will go forth from the Sanctuary we will build to pillage and burn, desecrate and devour; you will make the leaders of men crawl on their knees and beg for mercy – but this you will not give. In my name you will bring down the kingdoms of man and leave the land free for my uncontested mastery."

For the first time since their rebirth, my new recruits glanced at one another, gauging their companions' reactions, silently seeking the opinions of their peers. He who had held the title of Grand Inquisitor alone met my gaze unflinching, eyes narrowed, calculating our chances perhaps – or calculating his? I continued as though I had not noticed.

"Do not be fooled – this will be no easy undertaking. There are many who would seek to harm you, and some who might succeed. Mortals will fear and hate you for your superior strength and abilities, for here the strongest hold sway, and power is taken and sustained by force and might. In these first days, you must be wary, for you are few and your strength is not yet at its peak. In time, however, your strength will increase, our company will grow, and all of Nosgoth will be ours for the taking."

I had not answered the question. It was no mere accident that I had not told them who they had been. I had dissembled, like any politician seeking his voters' cast, and instead told them who they would become. For now, their numbed and confused minds would be satisfied with this answer, and by the time they had evolved enough to ask the more pertinent questions, I would have ensured their unswerving devotion to me. Blind loyalty precludes the need for answers. Religion proves that.

I named them then, by way of compromise. I approached them in turn, and watching each warily while I did so, I uttered the name that had been engraved in reverence on his coffin. There was a light nod of acceptance from each as I spoke the name aloud, but nothing more; not a flicker of recognition from any one of them. Now, for the first time since I had stolen into their sepulchre and committed those acts of damnable sacrilege, I allowed myself to relax. I had voiced the only words that might have triggered an adverse reaction in their purloined bodies, and they had remained stable. It was the final gauge of my success in the most daring and potentially fatal plan I had ever conceived.

The next few weeks were as something from a dream. Everything that had been denied me, everything that had disappointed me in my previous attempts at raising an army was entirely lacking from my experiences with these men. They understood and could follow orders, and were able to work of their own volition without my supervision at every juncture. Furthermore, they worked without complaint, whether the task I set was to move boulders or chop logs, or to raze a nearby village to the ground and massacre all the inhabitants. They seemed to understand that we were working towards a higher purpose, something that reached far beyond any of the mundane tasks I set them, and as such they worked with a will.

The erecting of my Sanctuary, however, was not proceeding as fast as I would have liked, and the unfinished structure meant that we had to travel miles to safety before each dawn, abandoning our work to the unpredictable caprices of fate and man for half of every day. To facilitate faster building, and against my better judgment, I created a small team of undead labourers from local peasant stock. I told myself that they would be able to lift much more than forced human captives could, that they could work with my new recruits in comparative safety, and be disposed of when the work was done. The truth was, I could not stand, even then, to be reduced to such a miniscule following, fierce and loyal as they were already proving to be. I wanted an entourage, a bevy of slaves at my beck and call. An Empire. It had always been my dream.

Our undertaking was fraught with hindrances, however. During the day, the Sarafan would come and undo much of the work we had undertaken in the night, and for a while it was clear that we did little but take two steps forward and one step back. At length, our lack of progress began to gall me, and together with the more lucid of my children, I began to plot a counter-attack. One would think that, being immortal, we would have eternity to scheme and plan, and to seize the optimum moment for our attack, but time was truly against us. The longer I permitted the Sarafan to hinder our efforts, the more opportunity they would have to muster their forces and continue to sabotage our work. No, our strike had to be pre-emptive, and it had to be made without delay.

I was far from certain that these recently-raised were up to the challenge, but needs must, and since I would never stoop to covert infiltration myself, I could demand no less of my lieutenants. Thus, I commanded a direct assault on the local barracks. Six men against sixty. The odds were long, but I had been forced into a corner by a combination of Sarafan persistence and my own stubborn reluctance to face the enemy in anything other than a head-on confrontation. As I gave the order, I locked eyes with Raziel to impress upon him the importance of his mission, and was met with that same coldly calculating glare I had seen before. The slightest flaring of his nostrils, and the barest curling of his upper lip left me in no doubt of his opinion of me. I refused to acknowledge it.

"And will you be accompanying us on this ... crucial mission, my Lord?" he asked, his tone envenomed.

I ground my teeth. It had always been my intention to go with them, to marshal their forces and guide them through the assault. Raziel's words insolently implied cowardice on my part, as though I were sending them in alone to do my dirty work.

"You will accompany me." I retorted, instantly wishing I had not risen to the bait. I had allowed him to belittle me. I shook off the ridiculous feeling by striding from the shelter of the Pillars and out into the well-trodden road that led to the barracks, trusting only to the hope that my influence was already strong enough to compel to follow. Presently, I was greeted with the reassuring sound of six sets of booted feet marching in orderly rhythm behind me, and I relaxed once more.

I called a halt on a rough earthen bank downwind of the soldiers' mess, and for a while I bade them stand and absorb the foul stench of burnt animal and pulped vegetable, to remind them of the degeneracy of their intended victims. The sounds of carousing carried on thin breezes to twitching ears, and one or two chuckled aloud. Already they had come to appreciate how alcohol weakened and disoriented their prey.

At my signal, we marched straight up to the front door, almost surprising the life out of the night watch. I accorded him the merest flicker of attention as Rahab, in his usual position on the left flank, gutted him where he stood. The group barely broke stride. I stopped again before doors that rose up twice as high as a man, strengthened by solid bars of iron, and I waited. At that instant, Dumah and Turel stepped forward from either side of me and slammed their palms against the doors. The barriers juddered inwards, toppled instantly by their nascent strength. As the dust blew up into clouds before the astonished faces of all those within, I walked calmly over the threshold with my six-man army in my wake.

Author's Note:

Thanks so much for the reviews so far, I really, really appreciate them, and I'm glad people have been enjoying. Sorry it's been coming so slowly – that should change over the next few weeks (fingers crossed).

I amended the reference to the Elder God in the last chapter- as several people pointed out, Kain wouldn't have known him then. wanders off to revise the Nosgoth timeline again