Author's Notes: Time for Amanda. Yes. She's been in Nosgoth for nearly two decades and I'd like to see how she deals with her stress in her free time. I mean, she can't just go to her room and flick on the PS2 and drown herself in sorrows. Reading books can only go so far when you're a vampire, and you've devoured almost every book in the library. Edit... I actually am going through and making this better..since I wrote Chapter 9 and 10 during the same long day.. it was crazy!
--Amanda--
After Kain left what I had dubbed the Castle of Blood, I left my two brothers alone to wander in order to feed myself undisturbed in the lower catacombs where the lazy vampire could dine. I had charmed every level underground, because the first night anyone had ever gone down there, no one came out. The Elder God had penetrated the thick stone walls, disrupting life as we knew it until Kain went down there and started kicking tentacles and taking down names.
Then, when all was finished and the battle was over, I went down there with the heaviest defense spells I could muster, and started magicking every stone I could get my magic on, ensuring that if Squid Boy ever wanted to come through the floor again, he'd better enjoy pain and suffering as much as he did pissing off Daddy K.
Humans, realizing that their gods were monsters, were forced to stay at the castle to meet the needs of our hungers. They were given food and shelter for their pains. I met few vampires along my path, the ones I'd risen from the dead with my feeble necromancy. They looked haggard and pale and like ghouls rather than strong warriors, like my two brothers. I sated my hunger in one of the cages, disposed of the body in a large fire in one of the lower catacombs; later, the ashes would be blessed and spread in the river that flowed directly underneath us where they would return to nature.
To deal with this short supply of people, we bred them and some had only known slavery for their short lives. I sneered at them in their cages as I passed, the young children clinging to their pathetic mothers, who stared with wide red-rimmed eyes. One young man caught my eye. In fact, I did a double-take. His face gazed fearlessly from the cage. Black hair... the familiarity made me look away quickly.
How I came across the magic to make the undead was not easy. There was a book written that took me ages to uncover it in my travels with Kain. It was written by Mortanius, supposedly the very master of death himself ages ago. In it, I had derived the method of bringing about undeath. I altered it a little, according to my limited knowledge, to create something like vampires. Of course it wouldn't work like I wanted, and several dozen corpses later, I finally had what I hoped was something that would last. I was not strong enough to create my own children like my father, who was far more powerful than I. My brothers weren't even old enough to start the all-awaited Change that would befall them and grant them new strength. As a result of my efforts, a little over three hundred wretched, half-decomposed monstrosities moved about the castle to do our bidding. Kain looked upon them with both scorn and pity. He knew I was trying my best... but it still wasn't good enough for me.
I was impatient to find myself beside Kain at the top of the most powerful empire of vampires. I wanted to see myself at the Pillars with Kain and our family and know peace would come at last. He was the bloody Scion of Balance; he could have made a hundred of his own kin but somehow he was holding back on it, as if he were afraid. He was right; he made choices, but he couldn't hide his fear from me. How could anyone with so much responsibility not be afraid of making mistakes?
My dreams were undoubtedly the only thing that kept me relatively happy. In my dreams, I was with Raziel. Kain was there, too. We all ruled Nosgoth together, with faceless brethren. And in my dream, we ravaged the night, destroying those who might become the Sarafan priesthood, following what we knew with our hearts and with iron certainty was the right path.
In reality, I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I watched Kain gather together everything to him. He had no army yet, but with simple parlor tricks, even the most powerful of men can become intimidated by Kain's power. Anyone who thought that Kain was a god would give him anything in exchange for being left alone or protection from raiders.
My wall about the Pillars was half-finished, as it was much simpler and faster to make than a monstrously huge fortress. Sometimes I visited the Pillars at night and sat in their shadows; often times, Kain came after me to remind me about sunrise. But we often sat together in silence, Kain leaning against the Pillar of Balance which had once been his throne in another life. He had wrought ruin upon the Pillars when he refused the sacrifice; now he was trying to undo all that and preserve Nosgoth from the ravages of the Hylden.
I climbed up the dark stairway in pressing, muddy stone darkness. The castle still smelled new in some places, like freshly turned earth. I stalked the corridor and met with Raoul, who was trying not to be harassed by one of the older vampires and yet could not help but instigate an argument. I don't know what it was they were snarling and growling about, but I ignored him, even when he began to follow me and see what I was up to. He couldn't help his curiosity - nobody saw much of me except for when Kain gathered us together to tell us something, which wasn't often because there wasn't really much to talk about that needed our presence.
I climbed another stairway, spiraling up into darkness that smelled new, the tower itself a jagged finger pointing to the moon. Then, out the window I climbed. I swung out on one of the flag poles sticking out from it by my hands. Raoul darted his head out the window, blinking. "What are you doing out there?"
"Hanging out," I said flatly; I began to swing myself back and forth, gripping the flagpole tightly. On the fourth swing I hooked my leg around the pole and wriggled my body up until I straddled the cool metal. I slid down the angle of it until my back pressed against the wall with the pole between my legs. "It's rather breezy. Want to join me?"
Raoul smirked, his harsh features twisting. "Perhaps you can tell me about father. You've never spoken to us about him before. Now that he's gone, you don't have to be afraid of talking about him."
"I am not afraid to talk about Kain," I sighed, appalled at his ignorance. "In fact, I'm sure he'd rather I didn't... just to keep you in your places. I'm not about to tell you all about his weaknesses and his interests. But I can tell you he likes to walk on the beach in the moonlight!" Giggling, I looked out across the trees, the forest broad and wide. Nobody would dare to come here unless they really had to. I closed my eyes and imagined myself floating on air. It wasn't easy with a wall of solid rock against my shoulder blades.
"Let's just hope he's strong enough to defeat that...that thing!" Raoul's voice grated against my ears. I wished he would just shut up and go back inside.
"Well... I can't speak for the Kain, but the last time I heard him talk about the squid monster, he said it was so easy to defeat it." I did not mention the fact that I'd seen it myself, but of course I was dying (or already dead) so how could I have known what I was really looking at? I began to scrabble my way up so I was standing on the pole with my hand on the wall. I looked down. The world shivered and swayed beneath me. Raoul was no longer interested in talking about the Elder God.
"Damn it, be careful. Sister, what are you doing?"
I stepped out onto the pole. It creaked and wobbled. My hand finally left the wall. I ignored Raoul's cries of, "Get back here! Father is going to be furious!"
Oh, yes, he was going to be furious. Among the things he prized in his life, my safety was second only to the safety of the Pillars. I stood high on the flag pole, drunk with the wind in my face, in my short hair. The flag snapped back and forth in a breeze and I wobbled even more. I slowly crouched, gripped the flagpole and sneered at the sky. "I'm fine! See? Raoul, why don't you go back inside if you're going to throw a fit like that!"
"Get back here," Raoul snarled. He shifted, uncomfortable, anxious, glancing back inside the darkened stair then back to me. "Don't make me come out there."
"You're a coward, brother. You're too young to have the courage to come get me. And I'd rather you didn't. Father is most likely far away from here!" My patience was waning. If he didn't stop treating me as if he were my father-- But then, if I wanted to be told what to do, I would have begged Kain to stay. I bounced on the pole, and flung myself forward.
Raoul howled with rage and fear. That soon faded. The rushing of air filled my ears, my pounding heart throbbed in my veins. By instinct, I threw my arms out wide to catch air in wings that weren't there. I spun in mid-air, rolling forward until I saw the next flag pole rushing up to meet me. I reached. The metal stung when it struck my fingers, which closed on it instinctively. I swung about it like a gymnast, once, twice, the sound of my body in the air cracking like a leather whip. I finally stopped and crouched again, and slid back on it and curled up against the wall, where the stones were built outward to form a ledge.
Panting, I scrabbled along the narrow ledge, barely a foot and a half wide. I imagined Raoul's bright, dark eyes staring down, searching for where my body might have fallen. A wretched giggle escaped my lungs. I considered myself lucky Kain wasn't here. He'd be... I couldn't even think of how angry he'd be. I finally found a window where I could open it. I pushed it open and dropped into the room beyond, realizing I had conveniently found myself in Kain's very chambers.
In all honesty, I'd never been here. Kain had forbade me, but since he wasn't here... I looked around. His room, though unusually homely, without very many trinkets just hanging around uselessly for no reason, still made me feel I was invading a very personal part of his life. There was the bed, dark drapes on the walls, wall sconces, candles...all of them constantly lit. I half-expected to see him emerge from behind a privacy screen in the corner of the room.
I approached the door and walked out, shutting it behind me just in time to see Faust running toward me with all due speed.
"Raoul just whispered to me that you just dived off the tower! Why?" he asked in that dull, soft-voiced manner of his. He never got that excited about anything, even when his sister did something crazy. Like jump from a very tall tower for what seemed to be no reason at all.
I answered him honestly. "I just wanted to feel the wind on my face. Going very fast."
Faust looked at me for a moment longer, before taking my hand and leading me down the hall. His touch was cool and soothing. "Next time," he murmured, "Please let us be there. If you want to dive off towers, we could have built a net for you to fall in."
Faust always knew just what to say. That comment had been the best idea I heard out of him for a long time after that.
--Kain--
The vampire citadel was as I had left it, decades ago. I still had to take a long bat flight to reach it, and landed among the ruins. The top chamber's roof was still blown apart when Janos, possessed by the demon lord, had flown off to make Nosgoth his own. The crumbled wreckage littered the earth beneath the Citadel's tower along the walls below, stagnating and decomposing beneath a layer of dust and white snow. There was no sign of the rough-speaking natives, humans who dressed in blood red feathers which, at the time, I had found great fun in beating to death with the Reaver. I was quite sad to see them gone.
The last place I saw that still existed was in the Oracle's Chamber. In the room, I circled the pool of water that had transported me here, via the "Oracle's" great powers. The doorway there was still open, broken off its hinges, and the door itself flung across the room as if by great force. Fragile as the state of this building was, I had to go down there and confront the monstrosity who had the title of a deity but not the status of one. Down the long corridor I stalked, hand poised to draw the Reaver, until I reached the broken edge that led down into a shallow, watery entrance where boulders had fallen in from around it. I did not fear the water any longer, so I dropped into the knee-deep pool of stagnant water. It was freezing, but not frozen, and I sloshed as quietly as I could to a tumble of stones at the edge of it.
I spotted an entrance. The stones had fallen over it, conveniently barring my passage. I pulled on one of them, but time had molded these stones together too firmly for me to pass. Decades, and still I was not allowed. I leapt back up to the ancient floor above, shivering from the cold.
"Show yourself," I growled to the darkness. I drew the Soul Reaver. "Raziel, what do you think? Suppose that the foul worm has dug deeper into the earth. Suppose that he finally realized that we are going to win. Perhaps he's hiding down there, never to reveal himself again."
The blade hummed, dangerously close to a spiritual awakening. Something was out here, stirring this power. Breathing deeply, I waited. The earth trembled. And broke open below me, the freezing water pouring into a cavern of such immensity that I actually had to squint to see down into the cavernous blackness.
"I am truly certain," said a disembodied voice that was all to familiar, "that you have stepped carelessly into my domain, Kain... wielding that egotistical valor of yours as if it had the power to protect you. Not here, fiend."
I backed away. The floor was literally devoured by the wet, tree-trunk thick tentacles that writhed up from the earth. The monstrosity's eyes began to appear, glossy, sickly ochre, hour-glass shaped pupils blinking, as the Elder God laboriously pulled its massive body from the earth, through that hole in the Citadel where it had once thrived before I had destroyed it in one of its homes. But this--
It was moving. Squeezing toward me - at me, more and more of the floor collapsing beneath its colossal weight with every intention of coming after me. I brandished Soul Reaver. I did not register the movement of the tentacle that swatted at me. I barely leapt from its bath toward the stairs, where I began to run. The air was too close, suffocating me; there was not enough room at all to fight it. I scampered, fleeing before the Elder God with a loud curse, casting backward glances toward the Elder God who roared in inevitable triumph. How embarrassing!
"You are finished, Kain! Did you think I lied when I said you would be mine?"
Another tentacle raced toward me, intent on gripping me and sucking the life out of my body. I brought the Reaver down upon it, then leapt clear up twelve steps, snarling angrily. The tentacle severed at once, and waggled uselessly, bleeding and oozing bloody on the walls, ceiling, steps like a high-pressure water hose.
The Elder God cackled. I realized why. I had overshot my dash; I was now going straight up into the broken chapel where Raziel had fought Janos Audron's possessor. From there, I had no escape whatsoever.
I skidded to a halt in the midst of the wreckage, the whole structure quaking as more bits of the roofing fell inward around where I stood. Trapped. I swallowed, watching as the Elder God hurled his massive body up the stone steps, into the room, tentacles writhing and shivering towards me, and then away, reaching ever skyward.
"No!" I gasped. The tentacles grasped the roof shingles with all their might. "You're going to bring this entire place down around us!"
"Ah... you are a quick-witted one." The voice rolled around me, coming from the creature's mind. I had not seen its terrible maw, for it would be the day I died when I saw it.
I rushed the tentacles, knowing that if I were to hack them loose before it brought the house down, I'd actually make it out in one piece. The stones creaked, wood groaned, but I slashed back and forth. I would not die here. I would not be buried alive. I beheld Amanda's worried, loving gaze in my mind and fought harder, until the tentacles themselves wrapped around me, squeezing. I jammed the Reaver point first into the grayish, purple mass until it released me, flinging me into the wall.
"Damn you to insufferable Hell!" The walls trembled again, but the tentacles had all gone, and did not regenerate as I had feared. The Elder God shuddered as I approached one of the great, gaping, unblinking eyes, and I smiled.
"Maybe. But Hell is in fact your realm of omniscient expertise," I muttered, and slammed the Reaver screaming into the eye. The blade roared to life. The metal was ablaze with bloodlust and soul lust, and I could barely hold onto its power as it began to drain the power of the Elder God through its gaping eye. The body - or part of it, it seemed, began to shrivel as the Elder God screamed. And screamed. One second more and the Reaver released its hold upon it, allowing me to jump free as the body disintegrated into a pile of blood and ooze.
"That's a good squid," I sneered into the darkness. Then I chuckled, turning away. I found a spot suitable in the room to dissolve into bats, and left a word in the room for the Elder God:
"Die."
