"Are you finally ready to tell me something?" Raziel asked. Janos had told him about Sarah's message, that she had requested a meeting for this purpose.
Sarah distractedly ran her finger along the edge of a box. It contained chunks of rock; rubble gathered after Janos had re-sealed the hole that Raziel blew in the side of the mountain. "I do have some things to tell you, but…"
Raziel slowly walked further into the room until he was across the table from Sarah. He didn't like the way her sentence just seemed to hang in the air while she hesitated.
"There are some things you should remember," Sarah admitted. "The first is that just because someone says something, that doesn't mean it's true."
"Are you intending to lie to me?" Raziel asked suspiciously.
"Not intentionally," Sarah amended quickly. "Sometimes people are sure that they know the truth, but they're really wrong. That's what makes this so hard to figure out."
"I suppose that is why you're unwilling to tell me anything?" Raziel asked in irritation.
Sarah bobbed her head. "I don't want to unintentionally give you false information."
Raziel deliberately laid his claws on the edge of the table and said, "I will decide what I'm willing to believe."
"Believe this," Sarah said. She licked her lips nervously, expecting that Raziel might not accept her next sentence. "Kain wants you to be free."
A moment went by. Raziel stood motionless with his claws braced against the table. His expression was unreadable. Raziel straightened slowly, but said nothing.
"And he needs to be kept alive," Sarah added hesitantly.
"Is it not our destiny to fight to the death?" Raziel spoke casually, as if he was asking about something far more trivial.
Sarah was silent. Several answers died before they left her lips. Finally, she said, "I don't know. I don't think you have to."
Raziel growled in irritation. He would have thought that Sarah was lying when she said that she knew things that she shouldn't, except that she had already proven that she at least knew some of it.
The drawings that Sarah had laid out earlier that day were now piled haphazardly at one end of the table. Raziel carefully began sorting through them. He found what he was looking for, all three variations of the two champions mural. Raziel laid them out on the table so that he could gaze at them.
Sarah laid her hand on her box of rocks and reminded Raziel, "Just because someone says something…"
Raziel mutely acknowledged Sarah's reminder.
Sarah took a stone out of the box and said, "Before the pillars fell, Ariel accused you of working for her murderer." She laid the stone carefully on the table and took another. "Mortainious told you that you were too late." Sarah laid that stone next to the first and fished a large chunk out of the box. "Janos believes in you." Sarah stood with the rock firmly clenched in her fist. She seemed like she was about to add something, but she instead laid it off to the side from the others.
Raziel realized that the rocks were a way for Sarah to keep her thoughts organized. He assumed that one pile represented those that insisted that he was the messiah of the vampire race, while the other pile meant that he belonged to the enemy.
"Moebius admitted that he didn't care," Sarah said, starting a third pile. "Your benefactor…" Sarah timidly dropped the stone in the Hylden pile. "Was trying to piss you off."
Raziel raised his eyebrows in mild surprise. He wasn't sure which part of that he wasn't expecting, but it made sense once he thought about it.
"I agree with Vorador," Sarah said, laying the final stone in the ambiguous pile. "You could be either. You're probably supposed to be both, but I think it's possible to fail."
"Why didn't you tell me this earlier?" Raziel questioned.
Sarah's faltering pattern returned. "I needed some more time to think about it. Besides, Kain, he really shouldn't have this distorting his decisions."
"What about my decisions?" Raziel asked.
"They were meant to be distorted," Sarah said, gesturing to her piles. "There's a mural in Avernus that was painted by the…" again, their name died in Sarah's throat as she remembered the taboo on speaking it. She muttered the end of her thought. "It bears a passing resemblance."
Raziel stared one final time at the drawings he had picked out. He admitted that he did feel confused by this exchange, but somehow it was comforting to realize it.
He reflected another type of confusion that had led him to believe that he had been noble and just in his mortal life. Raziel discovered that it was a good thing to know when you were lost. He still wasn't willing to blindly accept anyone's guidance, but Sarah's had been so ambiguous that it he could follow it yet still come to his own conclusions.
Rikku: Sarah's singing is more a nervous habit borne of getting the songs stuck in her head, but it's nice to know that her anxiety wouldn't neccesarily stop her.
Kaya: Hiya. You've said so much. I'm going to respond to your begging for me to do "hidden sanctuary" some more... I imagine that I'd re-write that eventually, except that it's buried under a ton of other projects. I'll see what I can do.
John-Paul: Um, actually it's Raziel. (ducks) I haven't drawn Kain yet, and he was only an occasional character in "Razzy Plush."
Lunatic Pandora: Well, Kain got there in chapter 12 I believe. He said that he was going to leave, but he didn't get around to it by the time Raziel got there. I think that Kain realized that Raziel was on his way. (Never occured to me that Kain isn't supposed to know that simply because I knew that.)
Okay, here's a note: Chapter 12 and 13 are going to get amalgamated so that Raziel is there before Kain hears Sarah's reasons for not telling him things. Some things will be lost, but it should fill that Plot Hole.
Another big important note: The only reason that Sarah got raped was because I wanted to have a descendant running around. I was going to keep him in the rough version even though he wasn't going to be in the rewrite. Raziel does still torture Sarah and whip her, but that's all. The reason that I'm removing the descendant now is because I realized I have trouble dealing with time like that.
Raziel going through the forges might have taken three days to a week at most. I couldn't figure out how to keep him busy for four months so that he could notice Sarah getting fat and then have her be positive enough about her condition to admit it. And then there was dealing with the remaining five months.
You'll notice that the game deals in indefinate periods that are never shorter than a year, and more often it's more like decades and centuries if not longer stretches. My periods of time may be shorter, but it's more like being unable to tell exactly how much time has passed until I suddenly decide that it needs to be a certain season.