Author's Notes: OH. My. God. I haven't seen one solitary review in ages. Is it because people have found something else to read and they enjoy? Oh, man... well, I struggled through this with grinding teeth because now I have no idea what am I to do... but I know what to do, and that's probably to make it go into Kain's New Dominion... blah.

Amanda--

The spinning, nauseating journey into Hell was nothing like I had expected. I thought I was to open my eyes and find myself at those Black Gates that paintings represented with garish burning fire and blood and gore; I was disappointed.

I floated instead in a darkness that seemed remarkably familiar. But I felt like I was standing upright. All around me was this darkness, and far below underneath my bare feet (I was completely nude) was a monster. It writhed with what appeared to be a thousand tentacles with eyeballs and flesh like bad meatloaf.

I thought, Well. This certainly looks interesting.

Further comment died from my mind when I noticed that I wasn't alone in my high place. Distance meant nothing to me who knew only that I was 'up' and Rancid Meatloaf was down.

I turned around and saw behind me. A stone fell somewhere in my stomach down to my feet and I jumped back. A winged figure stood glowing near me, with eyes like blue-green fire. He reached out to me, featureless but familiar. I haltingly took his hand in mine and felt his fingers convulse and tighten about mine.

"What's going on?" I asked him. "Where am I?"

"You're dead--Well, not dead. You are stuck. A few more slip-ups and you may not be able to escape Him."

I started, pulling him closer as if I could understand him better. "Who?"

"The dark one. The parasite that is sucking away the souls of this world to grow more powerful. He says he is a god, but he's a monster. I know this because I am trying to help destroy him."

"Who...Who are you?" I asked, and wished I could feel my mouth because I knew it would have become dry with a fierce anxiety by now. His touch felt good, and it was the only thing that kept me certain that I was still alive. He reached up very slowly with his free hand, and for a moment he just looked at me, touching my face, my hair.

He said, "Amanda." As if I didn't understand. As if I were a dumb idiot who couldn't see the truth, like a spitting bonfire through a night in the land of the dead. Well, that's not a very good analogy because he rather was a bright thing in a land that was, presumably, for dead folks. Or on the way there.

But my mind emptied and my heart blossomed for joy. Thinking here was clearer than thinking through my body - I was mad, my body was poisoned and my heart aching, but here I could say the things I wanted without having them come out all wrong. I threw my arms around him, crushing him close and didn't need to open my eyes to know that he was doing just the same. So tightly... we were crushing ourselves into one person--

Then it was ecstasy like I'd never known. Without a doubt Raziel was with me in a way no two people who loved each other could ever be outside of this realm. I didn't mind that our strange union was before the sight of some ungodly little monster; all of me and all of Raziel doubled up together to make a wholly new thing of bright compassion and love and fierce protection. Why hadn't I felt him before? Was this why I was so repulsed by the sword, because... I wanted to be near it?

Then a darkness slipped over us. The monster receded, and I heard an outraged voice screaming with perfectly manic glee, "MINE, do you hear meeee..."

Kain--

Janos didn't fight - as he had said, he wanted to die. But the Hylden Lord did not. It took every bit of the demon's strength to reacquire possession of his body. If he won (not when), he would have to take a very long hiatus to replenish his own strength. This battle classified as any 'last battle' in history, or in any of Amanda's technological things called 'video games'.

It was, to my disappointment, painfully easy to destroy him. In a handful of simple maneuvers, the Hylden Lord looking ridiculous and immature trying to keep up with my speed. In a juvenile attempt to slow me down, he threw dirt in my face, which only succeeded in making me sneeze before I pinned him to the ground and impaled him.

He burned, a terrifying mass of screaming vampire flesh, demon spirit and fire. I quickly retreated and did not even bother to watch him die. I owed Janos no respect whatsoever for being so weak. Or even the Hylden Lord.

The demons, fearing the same fate, fled my path as soon as I came near, carrying my broken daughter against my chest. Then I stopped at the edge of the shadows, looking without seeing toward the floor. Where did I want to go now? I loathed the Aerie and its poisoned look, how everything was wrong and black and twisted. I wanted to see it destroyed, bury its unhappy secrets to fade with the passage of irrepressible time.

That night, I was forced to take a long way out of the Aerie, taking a cold dark tunnel, carrying my daughter often across my shoulder. Then I had to swim through a final, twisting tunnel way only to find myself blocked by a huge grate at the entrance. Raziel could have made it through... but I was not Raziel, and even if I could have turned into mist and continued onwards, I had Amanda to think about.

So I went back, blasted a hole through a wall, and leapt down onto a stone outcropping, leapt from stone to stone, slipping and dousing my leg in the water more than once.

Then I was back into the forest where we'd first met the dark lord on the shore. I kept going, realizing how badly I had been shaking for the past twenty minutes of walking through the trees.

I set her down. She was drying off, and I built a small fire to help get her warm. Would she awaken? I didn't know. She already looked better. Her flesh was healing, and she seemed to attain some look of normalcy. I hated to drag her around so undignified.

"You deserve better," I growled, stroking her damp hair. It felt nice to feel it against my fingers, to feel the life suffusing her body, relentless heart that beat inside of her.

Hunger gnawed at me. I hunted, found a wandering party of humans hunting deer and killed one of them. Innocent blood was more rectifying than the blood of evil. I wanted nothing more than to sate my hunger without shame, but I did find myself a mite shameful of my gluttony.

I rested in the shadows, watching Amanda out of the corner of my eye. When the sun rose and I was satisfied that we were safely hidden from prying eyes, I covered her with a thick shroud I'd stolen from the mortals and drifted off to sleep, clutching the Soul Reaver in my right claw.

I dreamed as I hadn't done in centuries. It was a fierce, powerful dream that was almost a perfect mockery of reality. It came in three parts; the first the most horrific.

I saw the white back of a person, perhaps a human being, convulsing as though violently ill. The dream was silent, except for a raging, pounding heart. The skin broke in two places, and the muscles flexed, straining for freedom as the blood streamed in lone, red lines down the skin. Then at once, the flesh slid away, or rather, the protuberances from the flesh came forward. The thick, floppy objects stretched, covered in gore and a clear, greenish liquid, revealing pale black veins in skin that was wax-yellow and elastic.

A voice punctured the silence. "Understand this, Kain."

The next part of the dream showed what looked like a night sky, courting the moon, but it was all topsy-turvy, twisted and convoluted. I surmised I must have been looking into the surface of a body of water. I tried to lift my immaterial head and saw a glimpse of a building choked skyline. It may have been from the other world.

But then the perspective shifted and the world spun, revealing that the sky was not entirely empty. Large, fleeting figures filled the opposite horizon. They were so far away, they could have been anything. A flock of migrating fowl, or some other type of flier. Then the figures got closer... and I saw faces--

"Understand this as well. The future will come slowly..." The voice murmured again. I was not bothered with wondering about the familiarity, for my dark dreams had taken yet another, final turn.

There was a mildly impressive castle rising through the dirt of a fallen empire. The castle became larger... black spires punctured the starlit skies, winged beings floating from spire to spire, and often meeting in between to float upon the strong winds and exchange a few brief words. I couldn't hear what they said.

Then I noticed upon the front wall above the guarded gates a blood red cloth emblazoned with my clan symbol... the symbol that I now realized were wings on an individual. The image stayed in my mind until I woke up the next evening, finding Amanda just as I left her, sound asleep.

The journey took me farther from my familiar homeland than I could have imagined possible. I traveled with my daughter through savage wilderness not previously known to man. Vast empires had once stood here. The ruins of villages became uncommon as I fled civilization and entered a dark realm where none had trespassed on two legs for hundreds of years.

I knew not what led me to these hallowed forests and between the tall, fortified trees. Not a single tree had been felled by the axes of men or vampire here. The moonlight created knives of blue and white, bathing every surface in an eerie blue glow, details spilling into each other into a dreamlike blur. I was humbled by this sobering show of beauty. I had surrounded myself with the decimation of a world for thousands of years... and I had not seen a forest that had this aura of power.

I felt their power around me when I camped one night, and Amanda had been fed by a deer I'd felled earlier. She wasn't asleep much anymore, and I had managed to get her to follow me places. She was hypnotized, as I was, by the beauty of the forest just now. She ate when she was hungry; she slept when she was tired.

She wasn't altogether interesting anymore, but I spoke to her anyway as I would have spoken to the Soul Reaver.

"It is beautiful," I said, nodding as I chewed a piece of deer bone, sucking the marrow. I crossed my legs, a small fire made of fallen dried branches. "So much life."

I continued on, switching ends as I turned the bone around and sucked the marrow from that end. In between greedy noises of suckling, I spoke, unaware of how I really sounded. "It...seems to me... that I'm being led... not that I mind. I actually don't mind being fated to go somewhere. As long as I'm prepared."

"Here." She looked up suddenly. "Right here. What you said has marked this place. Your words will echo throughout time. It will be the cornerstone of your empire. To lead, be led, and be prepared." Her eyes glittered with perfect clarity. Then the shine went out of them and she seemed... to be herself.

She slumped over, and her head fell into my lap. "...How long have I been...asleep?"

"Long enough." I found that I could not speak well at all. "Have you... rested well?"

"Perfectly," she said, nuzzling and purring. "But we're a far bit away from the Pillars, aren't we? You should have two palaces... one here, and one with walls built around the Pillars to keep everyone out. Big walls!"

"Are you hearing yourself, girl? You're rambling!" I stroked her hair anyway, but my mind was elsewhere. I tried to imagine myself acquiring the masses needed to build such fortresses... and knew that I would, somehow. With a sardonic grin I knew that I definitely would.