Chapter Eight
If Maddrell was not exaggerating and the Dumahim really were outgrowing the Refuge then they must be colossal in size. The chambers and passageways were large enough for Dumah himself to have been comfortable in and still have room to spare.
The air was even colder within the Refuge than it was out in the open, as though the stone itself was emanating the chill in response to the general mood of the place.
Every so often, in strategic places, storm lanterns had been hung from chains and hooks to illuminate the Refuge but not to allow light to spill out and give themselves away to peering Hylden patrols.
Throughout the places they were taken through Kain could see the odd few items and objects that suggested the Vetus vampires did indeed reside there even though he could not find sight of the vampires themselves. In corners there were fragments of discarded carapace, claw marks in the walls, forgotten skeletons of human and Hylden meals from many moons ago…all symbols of occupation in the dark emptiness.
Maddrell turned yet another sharp corner and mooched off into another large room, this one seemed even more dark and vacant than the others. The walls were only roughly shaped and the floor uneven. Only one lantern at the centre struggled to give enough thin light to fill the space and it was failing miserably. Through the gloom a large lattice gate could be seen at the other end of the room. It appeared to be blocking the way to another tunnel.
"And where does that lead?" Kain asked, tired of the endless corridors of stone and not knowing what direction he was travelling in.
"Take a wild guess." Maddrell barked.
"The pipeline."
"Ooh, any sharper and you'll cut yourself."
"May I remind you, Maddrell, that it was you who approached us and not the other way around, so you can damn well get off my back."
"I'm not on it!"
"Can't you just forget it for five minutes? Pretend I'm someone else. You know, Raziel did come back." He was really scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to shut the bat-eared annoyance up.
"But you still killed him and the clan! Just because he came back that doesn't excuse you from the initial action nor all the other murders! I hate you! I want you to die!"
Khila sighed as the two vampires she seemed to have befriended continued to argue. For a while she tried to listen in and follow what they were saying but she soon got confused and gave up. She leant against the bars of the gate and waited for them to finish their childish taunts.
She half dozed for a while but did not sleep; she couldn't, not with all of their yelling.
Maddrell had started all of this; he had refused to let up on what had happened so long ago.
She looked at him critically and as she stared she felt something, just for a second…a connection. Maddrell blinked a few times and shook his head as though something was bothering him, then it was gone.
What was this? Had she just done that? And what was that connection she had felt? It was as if for just a short moment she had been linked to him by thought alone.
She remembered back to when she had drunk from Kain's wrist back in the city…what was it that he had said? 'I think that you may have acquired some of my Dark Gifts.' Was this one of them? She tried to think back to a book she had snuck a look at once that had mentioned some of the Gifts that Kain had…could this be a form of his Charm ability? She had not felt as though she had been within Maddrell's mind, it had been more as though she had been beside it, just touching the edge of it…just enough to, maybe, influence it but not take possession of it…
She concentrated again and again there came the same cold connection that she had felt before. She concentrated harder, to keep the connection firm and in her mind she called out a voiceless order to him. It wasn't the Whisper; it was something far deeper that you heard with your soul rather than your mind or ears.
Silence!
Maddrell visibly flinched and stopped in mid-rant with his sentence forgotten. He groaned and held his head as a wave of dull, aching pain washed through it.
Khila felt the connection break once the command had taken effect and so simply watched the result.
Kain looked at Maddrell. "What happened?" he asked, although was not concerned.
"I-I-My head…argh, it hurts…" but the pain was fading now.
Khila stifled a giggle and smiled. "Are you alright?" she asked.
"Yes." Maddrell replied, straightening up. The pain was now gone. "I don't know what happened…I just stopped, it was like I had to stop, whether I wanted to or not, it was like my mind just went ahead and did its own thing. It was strange, it was as though someone had given my thoughts a little push." He then glared at Kain. "You bastard, that was an evil trick to play."
"I did nothing of the sort!"
"Don't try to deny it! There is no one else here with the ability to control the minds of others, how dare you violate me so! Stay out of my head, you pervert! It's like mental rape!"
"Oh, please don't start again, it isn't his fault." Khila called from where she was still leaning casually against the gate. "I did it."
"What? But you are just a pet…" Maddrell said.
"I have some of Kain's Dark Gifts because I drank his blood, although I think I only have weak versions of them." she admitted and then looked to Kain…there was a strange expression on his face, something she had not seen before…it was as though he was pleased with her. "I don't think I can control people completely but I think I can manipulate them in small ways." She was rather happy about this too; she'd never had any kind of gift before, let alone a Dark one.
"Well, what else can you do?" Maddrell asked.
"I don't know. I only discovered that one by accident."
"Well just don't do it again, alright. That was awful. I feel so used."
"I'm sorry." She said apologetically. "I really am. I didn't know it was that bad."
"It isn't really." Kain said. "It all depends on how strong a persons mind is. I think you only managed it with Maddrell because he was not expecting it…also; he is an idiot. However, if you tried it again on him I doubt it would work now that he knows. You don't need to worry."
Khila moved her hand to brush her hair out of her face, but as she did so she felt something else that was new…she felt…light. She looked at her hand; tendrils of thin white mist seemed to be flowing from it.
She frowned and was about to say something along the lines of 'that isn't normal' but was interrupted when her whole body faded in soft fog and fell through the bars she was leaning on, leaving a few wisps of mist behind. As soon as she was through her solid self reformed and she hit her head on the ground. "Ow!"
"Ah, I think we have just discovered another Dark Gift." Kain observed.
She picked herself up off the floor. "What the hell did I do?"
"You passed into your Mist form."
"I don't want it!"
"I don't think you have much of a choice."
Khila touched the bars of the gate. She stayed solid. Her body decided not to disintegrate into vapour again.
"I suggest that you learn how to use that Gift; it may well come in handy and I may require you to employ it whilst we are in the castle." Kain told her.
Khila leaned her head against the gate. "Kain, I don't feel very well."
"It's just the shock, it will pass. Maddrell, are you going to be useful and open this gate or are you just going to stand there?"
"Don't try to tell me what to do!" but even as Maddrell yelled those words he was extracting a key from his breechclout. Again, how he managed to hide anything but his decency within it was a question to baffle even the most brilliant of minds. "Out of the way, old man." He turned the iron key in the heavy lock with a loud echoing click and then slid the gate across into the wall. The old metal creaked in protest; it had been many years since the gate had last been moved.
Khila looked quite faint. "I really don't feel well, Kain." She murmured.
"Oh, come now, don't be so silly. Pull yourself together." But as he neared her she keeled over backwards with a sigh.
"Khila?" Kain knelt and reached out to check on her, but as his hand touched the skin of her arm he had to snatch it away again; she was burning hot. The air around her began to quaver with heat haze and not only that but the shackles that still clung to her wrists were melting, the metal was turning to liquid and shrinking away from her…
"What's happening to her!" Maddrell gasped, backing up from the invisible blaze radiating from her body. "What did you do to her!"
"I did nothing!" he replied, likewise backing up rapidly and raising his arm before his face.
"This is all your fault!"
"How?"
"I don't exactly know but it just is! You are evil and so you did it, don't try to deny it!"
"You are insane. I have done nothing."
"Then why did she pass out when you went near her, eh?"
"Co-incidence. Didn't you hear her saying that she felt unwell?"
"Yes, and I also heard you telling her that it was all in her head."
"I said no such thing."
"Well maybe that wasn't the exact phrase used but they were words to that effect!"
While the two of them stood bristling toe-to-toe, venting their spleens, Khila's aura of heat haze simmered down and dissipated.
When they finally took a break from hurling insults and accusations they noticed that Khila was still unconscious.
"Hmm, the air around her has stopped trembling." Kain said and then cautiously laid the back of his hand on her arm. "She isn't burning any more." What in the hell was that? Was she about to Immolate herself! I can barely remember the last time I used that Gift…what else of mine does she have? Is she going to turn into a wolf while she sleeps? Or teleport away without understanding how? Does she have any control at all?
"Well, it looks as though you're going to be alone on this little trip; she's in no condition to go anywhere. Leave her here with us; we'll see she never returns to Hylden hands. She'll be quite safe." Maddrell told him.
Kain considered this. "I'm afraid that she has to go with me. I'll just have to wait for her to wake up." Good grief, how many times is this woman going to pass out?
"Look here; firstly, she may not wake up at all. Secondly, if she does wake up we don't know how long that will take nor what she will be like. For all we know that little episode could have fried her brain."
"I need her. I will wait."
"I thought patience wasn't one of your virtues."
"It is when I require it to be."
"Are you sure I can't persuade you to leave? I really don't want you anywhere near me."
"Maddrell you couldn't throw me out let alone get me to go of my own will. Deal with it."
"I wish the ground would swallow and crush you." Maddrell said matter-of-factly as he picked up the once again comatose Khila. "I wish you would fall into a pond and burn. I wish you would trip and fall on the Reaver and I wish I could be there to see it so that I could laugh and finally feel that there is some kind of justice in this fetid world."
"You don't mince your words do you?"
"What's the point? You have to be succinct or people will never take you seriously. I've never believed in drawing out a simple fact."
"If that is the case you can stop saying how much you hate me, you have made your point."
"Oh, now I said I liked to be to the point but I never said I wasn't fond of repeating myself. There is nothing wrong with driving the message home."
"So I've noticed."
"Look, why don't you go and take a walk around the Refuge or something? I'll keep an eye on little Kitten here and Whisper if and when she wakes. I think it would be for the best if you kept the hell away from me…one of us is going to die otherwise." Then he added under his breath, "and trust me it will be you."
"I heard that."
"Really? Oh well, have fun."
With his piece well and truly said Maddrell went to find a room for Khila to sleep off the unfortunate side effect of her Dark Gifts.
So, yet again Kain was left on his own in unfamiliar territory.
Well at least this time it should be unfamiliar, friendly, territory, which was a nice change from the danger infested places he had grown so acclimated to over the years.
The Refuge had a good feel to it; it felt lived in unlike so many places that seemed mainly for show and practicality rather than comfort or rest.
Although he was unsure as to what kind of reception would await him he decided to go and find some of the Vetus if it was at all possible.
He wondered how many, if any at all, remembered him or whether, like the pets of the city, they only knew of him as a historical fairy tale figure.
As he meandered through the corridors of stone he wondered where all of the Vetus actually where; even though he could see and feel that the Vetus did live here he couldn't actually find any of them.
As minutes faded into an hour he strolled casually into yet another very large, very dark and very empty room…well, empty except the vast open pool that occupied most of the floor space. The water was beyond murky and the surface almost as still as stone. For a moment, when he had first seen it, he had thought that it might have been black ice but a deftly tossed stone broke the illusion of solidity and sent expanding ripples reaching out for the confining walls of the miniature lake.
As he turned to exit a voice called out to him in his mind. "Why…did you leave us?"
He faced the water just in time to see a smooth shark-like befanged head rise part way out of the water, the small cheerless black eyes glinting in the gloom. "Why did they all have to die?"
A Rahabim; finally one of the elusive Vetus had come forth to greet him…although he doubted that this was going to be a happy meeting. "Who do you mean?"
"Did your own sons' lives mean so little to you? You knew that Raziel had returned with vengeance empowering him yet you did nothing to stop him even when he came for you…why?"
"Some things are too hard to explain." Kain told the Rahabim whose eyes showed the distress in its soul. "Despise me if you wish to but I will feel no shame nor will I ask to be forgiven. What's done is done."
"But it could be undone…"
"Explain."
"Think of it; anything can be undone. You should know that. You changed history by killing King William…or so it is written and told…and the Hylden; that is how they were able to come here in the first place. All because time so fragile…"
"And if you could go back, would you?" Kain asked, moving to the side of the pool. "Would you change things?"
The Rahabim slid back under the water for a short while and then poked his head back up to just under his eyes. "No, I would not dare." He said. "I could not be sure that what I did would not just make things worse. Best just to accept the present and hope for something better to come. Time is not a toy; if you break it you can't fix it or throw it away and get a new one."
"That is a sensible decision to make."
The Rahabim blinked with translucent eyelids. "How were you resurrected again?"
Once more came the question that had been following since his arrival; he was supposed to be dead, so how was it possible that he was walking around? "Magic." He said, falling back on the nice but annoying all-round answer that could provide explanation for close to everything.
"Is Caucahn dead?"
"No. I took the Soul Reaver back but could not find him. I will soon though. Very soon." Kain just couldn't be bothered to go into everything, he may as well just find a suitable lie that people could readily accept and comprehend.
"Oh…what do you want with us then? Do more have to die?"
"Only the Hylden, child. There is no need for vampire deaths any longer. The enslavement and suffering will soon be over."
"I wish I could believe you." Again the Rahabim's head dipped under the cold surface and popped up again.
Oh, I've heard that before, I think it's time to change the subject. "How many of you are there?" Kain couldn't help but ask.
"Not enough. There are barely fifty of us in total."
Kain gaped. "Fifty, is that all!"
"Yes, that is all. We can barely find enough humans to feed us let alone sire them. We die off but none emerge anew. The Hylden are doing an effective job of exterminating us."
Fifty? Why does that shock me so? Was there not a time when I was the sole surviving vampire in Nosgoth?
"If it makes you feel any better," the Rahabim continued, "There are a little over a hundred pets if you count them from all of the cities." Something resembling a comforting smile camped itself on the Rahabim's fishy features that were half obscured by the water.
Kain sat down at the edge of the pool and crossed his legs, resting his arms on his knees. "Where are all of the other Vetus? I could not find them."
"They are here there and everywhere. We are few and Nosgoth is large. We try not to come to the Refuge unless we have to and even then only for the daylight hours, it stops us feeling so much like prisoners within a self made cage. But it is a central place for us and we cannot help but return if only to see each other and confirm we still do exist."
"Have you given up so completely? Did you never try to overthrow the Hylden rule?"
"Of course, but with consistent failure. We had to give up; we had no choice. For a while Maddrell spoke of leaving Nosgoth again but the Hylden have spread so far that that would be impossible. We worry for Maddrell…"
"Why is that?"
"After you left and the Hylden took over, when he actually came back to Nosgoth, Maddrell was the one that kept us together. He was always strong for us and made the decisions that we were too afraid to make, such as retreating away and stopping the fight so that we could preserve our numbers and gather new vampires before returning to offensive positions. During that time some humans even came to us willing to be turned. But in the end it was no good. It was Maddrell's idea also to retreat for good and pretend to become 'wild' so that we would be ignored. After that we were able to piece ourselves together again."
"So why do you worry for him? He seems well to me."
"You do not know him as we do. He has changed…he has lost his fire. Not long ago he told us to go separate ways and find places to be forgotten to be safe. He told my brothers and I to take to the sea and erase the rest of our kind from our minds. He has little hope in anything now."
"After so many years it is no surprise that he has broken." Although he doesn't act that way in my presence. "So why did you stay? Why did you not go as he told you to?"
"I will not abandon my kin. If we are to die we will die together. We vowed that none of us would ever have to go alone. When Darent's soul finally is released one of us will be beside him. Darent is that last Melcha-"
"I know; Maddrell explained to me." Kain cut of the Rahabim's sentence.
"I heard you arguing. Maddrell seems a little more like his old self with you and that girl around. Who is she? Maddrell has been fascinated by her these past few years."
"She is…an enigma. She is a pet, Caucahn's pet. Or rather, she was until I freed her."
"And now she follows you?"
"It would seem so. What is your name, by the way? I am afraid to say that I cannot recall you."
"I would not expect you to. I was never important and was young when you disappeared; you would never have even known that I existed. My name is Amarat."
"Well, Amarat, tell me this; do you expect anything from me now that I have returned?"
Amarat contemplated this while he wetted his head again. "I expect that you will go for power…leadership…that you will set yourself to ruling Nosgoth once more."
"I will rule, you may count on it."
"I wish you luck. It would be a miracle if you could even take hold of one city let alone the entire land."
"Do not doubt me. I will succeed. I did it before and I shall do it again."
"Please, Kain, do not expect us to back you." Amarat dived and this time stayed down as though he was afraid of punishment for his words. "We cannot fight again. We have spent too long fighting and too long hiding. All we want is a little peace for once."
Kain stood up. "You'll be left in pieces unless you stand up for yourselves."
Amarat had no reply. Kain could just see the shadow of his shape in the gloom of the water. "You are the ones that need luck." He told the Rahabim as he left.
Kain resumed his exploration of the Refuge, passing by room after room of empty dark nothingness until a thin stream of pale light caught his eye; shining out through the cracks at the edge of the door.
Upon entering the room Kain discovered Maddrell perched on the edge of the bed Khila occupied with one hand laid on her forehead. The bat-like vampire had his eyes half closed and had an almost trancelike expression.
"What do you think you are doing, Maddrell?" Kain growled.
Maddrell's eyes swivelled in their sockets to look at him as Kain came forwards, but made no other movements. "So protective." Maddrell whispered with a soft smile "How cute. If I didn't know you better I would say that you have feelings for her."
"You bore me, Maddrell. Just explain."
"Ah, how interesting; I notice that you do not try to deny my words." He sniggered quietly.
"Don't make me repeat myself." Kain warned. His patience was waning and it could be heard in his voice.
"Oh, you're so easy. Alright, calm yourself." He removed his hand and his expression returned to normal. "I was only reading her memories; it's something else I learnt while I was 'away'."
"Why!"
"Shhhp! She isn't really unconscious any more but she is asleep. She needs to rest after that moment of hers. I just wanted to clear up a few last murky areas, see what Dark Gifts she has acquired from you so that we can ensure we don't have any more little accidents."
It was a sound reply and Kain couldn't really find a reason to argue. "So what did you find?"
"Mist form, a variation of Charm, Pyrokinesis, Telekinesis, a kind of Rage, basically anything that you have she has a feeble version of…but…there were two others, two of her own, that I don't believe she even realises are within her, that did not come from you at all. She has had them for quite some time, many years, and they seem to be latent abilities buried in the back of her subconscious that activate only at an instinctive level such as when she is emotionally aroused such as when she is scared, in pain or the like. They seemed to develop due to the situations she was in."
"And what Dark Gifts are these?"
"One of them is a weak form Hydrokinesis."
"She can control water?" Possession of such a gift would be a dream…and would make life a whole lot easier.
"To a degree, yes. She seems mainly to only be able to get small amounts to divert its course. She cannot make a river flow uphill but can make trickles and raindrops move aside, get them to avoid touching her. That is how she has survived so many rain tortures; most of the drops missed her because she pushed them away with her thoughts without even realising. If she was ever able to harness that ability, to control it and realise its full potential…well, just think about it…"
Kain had been…and the possibilities were staggering; a vampire that could control and manipulate water…a step closer to utter invulnerability, a step higher than the Rahabim had reached…if only she could activate her ability at will and build on it. "What was the other Gift you found? You said that there were two."
"Yes, I did. Well…I have never heard of anything like this so I cannot put a name to it; only a description. The best way of explaining it is by saying that she has a link to the world of ghosts…she has a slight presence in the realm of the truly dead. Although she cannot leave her body and become an ethereal entity or wraith, she can be influenced by things not of this plane of existence. She can sometimes hear the voices of the damned spirits and every now and again she may have a glimpse of a darker, more twisted world where the dead live on in suffering. There are times, also, when she may be able to see things about people that are otherwise hidden; things that trail their past and affect their future come to her in visual form. Does that make any sense?"
"Yes. How very interesting." Well, that makes things somewhat clearer. Now what she had been saying before that he had passed off as semi-insane nonsense actually made some strange sense. Now he thought about it in this new light he was sure he could understand…the voices that had hurt her at the Pillars could well have been the cries of the Guardians, somehow trapped in a torturous purgatory because of the Pillars complete destruction. Also…the two shadows she had said she could see behind him…his own and that of the 'rag man'…perhaps the rag man was Raziel, by his side as he had promised. It was a strangely comforting thought. Then, of course, there was the voice she referred to as 'The Deep'. What was it she had said? 'His circle, he never stops speaking of his bloody circle'. No,not circle, she didn't mean circle; she meant Wheel. 'The Deep's' true identity could only be the Elder God, still squelching away to himself underground after all these years and still trying to incite wars to feed him with souls and turn his Wheel of Fate. It seemed that some things never changed.
"I found some other interesting things whilst I was inside her head too. Absolutely nothing to do with Dark Gifts." Maddrell continued. "I found some facts that have allowed me to put together a theory that might well explain why she appears the way she does"
"…?"
"Why she looks like you."
"Ah. What might this hypothesis be?" he was quite interested to hear it. That fact about Khila had been bugging him for quite some time now and it had, in truth, been the main reason that he had saved her. He had seen his own reflection in her weakened and dying shell and it would have troubled him to leave her behind.
Maddrell rose from where he had sat, the bed gave a protesting wooden groan as his weight was removed, and then he exited the room beckoning for Kain to follow with a casual wave of his claw.
Once they were both outside and the door was closed Maddrell explained. "It is all to do with how the Hylden create new vampires. They don't simply make one pet sire another; they use a complicated process involving Essence."
"Essence?"
"Every creature has Essence. Every time a vampire is sired the Essence is passed on and mutates within the new vampire to become unique to them. The Essence passes from sire to fledgling all the way down the generations. Humans have Essence but with them the Essence of the two parents combines to create a new one for the child, instead of changes in the same duplicated one. It is possible to extract and trace the line of Essence back through the ages and de-mutate it to any time, to any creature it has been through and that is how the Hylden are able to make such weakened vampires. They traced the line of Essence back to a fledgling vampire with limited power that was relatively weak, namely the newborn children of your precious Lieutenants, and then replaced it into a new body after removing any Dark Gifts. Most pet vampires that you see hold the Essence and thus the resemblance of the vampire the Essence was traced to."
"What?"
"Uh…you take a strong vampire from this time now; we'll call him A, extract his Essence and trace it back to one of his weaker great grandsires, B. Now you take B's Essence and put it into body C. C then takes the form of B."
"Then, you mean that by taking another's Essence they become that person?"
"Yes, that is a sufficient way of putting it. Now we come back to the point of all this; Khila. It would seem that she is one big mistake. Essence was extracted from a captured Vetus vampire and then the tracing of the line of Essence was left up to a novice as a kind of work experience. It seems that the novice traced it back too far and didn't notice until it was too late and she was already changing. It was traced straight through the weak fledgling, straight through your Lieutenant son and straight to your Essence."
"Then that would mean…"
"Yes. She is you in all but mind. She is how you would look if you had been born female. The only thing traced Essence cannot change about the new body is its gender. She went from being a normal human girl to being your re-incarnation."
"But this is still only speculation." Kain pointed out.
"No. It is solid facts that I pieced together from the fragments in her head and a few things I have personally seen. I have seen pets being made but never knew why they changed the way they did. Now I know; she supplied the last few missing pieces of the jigsaw."
To be continued……Authors Note – Ah, here we are at chapter 8. I think it was the longest one yet. Hope you still find it as interesting as when it started and think it's worth reviewing (hmm…I said that last time, didn't I?). 30 reviews, woohoo! I feel so privileged. Ok…where was I?……Oh, right; replying. I shall make this a habit.
Lunatic Pandora 1 – The reason little explaining happens is because I'm a little foggy on the details myself. I know why he did the ripping of Raz's little winglets but the extinction of all the Razielim…just to piss him off so he'd follow, having no reason to stay…to stop a rebellion from them coz of the execution? Meh, I dunno really, I don't pay enough attention anymore. Bad me! I shall play the games again.
Manus Dei – Ello again. I won't be getting rid of Maddrell just yet (or ever…I dunno) he's fun. I like writing arguments. The story would be a bit stale without him, methinks. Hmm…maybe Maddrell can be choked, they haven't had a fight in a little while…I like that bit too (returns evil grin). References to other characters…how do you mean exactly?
Varyssa – Well, I feel praised. Thank you. Hmm…romance isn't going to be part of the main plot, though they may still become close in a companion sense of the word. But I feel I owe you for always reviewing…so…I'll write you a bonus extra chapter and bung it in once the main story is over…like an optional chapter, nothing to do with the overall plot except characters and location, it's just there if you want it, sort of thing… How's that?
Darkmaster 2 – Ooh, haven't seen you in a while. Ta for the review!
Smoke – Yay! I love long reviews. Well, what do you think of Khila now? Was it what you were expecting? But, she hasn't given up all of her secrets yet, nor have we seen the last of Maddrell. I like him. He has big ears. Maddrell didn't sire because he didn't want a big clan of Razielim drawing attention to where he was 'hiding' and then once he came back he had his brothers and cousins to look after.
Chicken-Chan – You talk as though all my characters are nearly naked! There are only 3 and you know it. I'll see you in school.
Selphie Fan – Whoa, that's a lot of reviewing…(Cheesy grin, yay). Be happy; there is no smooching in this fic. Unless you count the optional chapter I'll do for Varyssa. I hope you come back and review again. It's good to get an overall view of what people think as I go along.
Krimzon – Killed something in you? That isn't a good thing. Anyway, that aside, there will be more Raz…I have plans…Mwaahaha, yes, I have Plans (with a capital 'P' no less). Ooh, sorry. Went a bit odd there. Yes, more Raz mentioning on the way. May take a while though…
Windra – I hate it when I lose stories…think this one's still going ok? I hope you have an easier time finding Blood Omen 1 than some people I know. I got mine easy ages ago but a friend of mine has seen a copy of it go for around £50! Mmm…I love second hand game stores. Praise be to Computer Exchange! (That's where I found a copy of it for £5). Happy shopping.