Chapter Nine

She is me…can that be right, or is Maddrell only trying to annoy and trick me? But why would he lie about something like this?

"So, she is a female me?" Kain asked just for confirmation.

"Oh, how many times! Yes, she is you! Gmmmh!" the last part of his exclamation was lost and muffled due to Kain's claws being wrapped viciously around his mouth.

"Shhh." Kain reminded him, nodding to the door.

Maddrell sneered through the three thick fingers of bone and then prized them away. "Don't touch me."

"Don't give me reason to." Good grief, he acts like a child yet he could well be thousands of years older than me…

"I hate you so much." Maddrell stated as he crossed his arms.

"Maddrell, you greatly try my patience and I would prefer to just silence you…but instead I'll just ask you to spare me a moment…listen…Raziel understood why I did what I did; not at first, I will admit but-"

Maddrell didn't give him time to finish. "I don't care about Raziel to be frank. As far as I am concerned he is just as guilty as you are. He should never have gone to you; he signed his fate and he knew it."

"So you think he should have used his new wings and flown, never to be seen again by his sire, brothers or clan?"

"No, that would have been impossible. Don't you know anything? Those new wings of his were miles too small to carry his weight in flight, he might have glided but that would have been it. And neither did I mean for only him to leave your damnable 'empire'. What I meant was that he should have taken us all out of Nosgoth and as far away from you as vampirically possible. He was so blind, he was so convinced that you would just be somewhat peeved, maybe even angry but he never thought for a second that you might do what you did…tuh, I knew better." He growled. "Oh, can't you just bloody well leave!"

"No, Khila is too useful for me to simply leave behind."

"Fine." He pushed past. "I'll wake the little Kitten myself!" he reached for the door.

Kain predicted that Maddrell's version of 'waking' in his present state of mind would be rather violent and potentially damaging, especially if he focused on the fact that Khila was Kain (to a degree), and so grabbed the Razielim firmly by both arms and yanked him away from the door. He was surprisingly easy to move, seeing as his bones were hollow. It isn't only the size of the wings that count.

"Rghh, get off of me and get out of here."

"I told you before; I am going nowhere until Khila is fit to come with me."

"Fine then, go and find something to occupy your time away from me."

"Such as? All suggestions will be welcomed." He said, still dragging him around and increasing the pressure he put on his limbs, just to prove that if he wanted to he could easily break them.

"Do what you do best; find something simple and complicate it."

"Are you two arguing again?" Khila asked. She was standing in the doorway and was most definitely awake, although there was still a veil of tiredness hanging over her face.

Kain released Maddrell and then had to dodge the blow that was aimed at him. As childish payback he stuck his foot out to trip him up. Maddrell fell flat on his face as intended.

He pushed himself up off the floor snarling and growling like some kind of wild beast. "I'll kill you!" he roared with fervour and leapt at Kain only to find himself tangled in a cloud of mist.

"Stop it!" Maddrell wailed as the mist congregated behind him "Don't do this to me!"

"Do try to calm down." Kain suggested with a disapproving sigh as if it had been Maddrell's own clumsiness that had brought him to his knees. He didn't know why, but being around Maddrell aggravated his usual mood…the Razielim was far too energetic and immature for his own good and it had a habit of rubbing off on the people he was around.

"Shut up! Don't tell me what to do! You can't even control your own temper so how do you propose to control me? What gives you the right to destroy my life just because I have something that you don't! Tell me that!"

"What do you want me to say, Maddrell? Do you want me to tell you that I am sorry, is that it? I have no reason to apologise. I never have and I never shall so silence yourself before I cut your tongue from your mouth."

"It is too late for sorry anyway, you idiot! I want you to suffer!"

Kain had had just about had enough trying to match Maddrell at his own game. It was time to show him just who was in charge. He hadn't become an overlord by letting things pass with stoic dismissal. He didn't dare try to get too physically near him as he seemed to have no fear and a man with no fear was a dangerous one indeed. So he did the next best thing; he grabbed him telekinetically by the throat and slammed him into the wall. "You think I haven't! Do you think for a second that I asked for this! I am just as much of a victim as you are, just for different reasons!"

"Don't make me laugh!" to punctuate his statement he attempted to spit but found that Kain tightened his hold so much that all he could manage to produce was a painful hacking sound.

"That is not a nice thing to do." Kain told him earnestly, lifting him further from the floor and pushing him harder into the wall. Just as it seemed he was on the verge of passing out he let him go and he dropped to the floor in a coughing heap.

"Leave me alone!" Maddrell wheezed, rubbing at his throat. "Why did you have to come back and ruin things all over again! Why!"

"What do you mean by that?" Kain demanded.

"We are only just managing to cope as we are, we don't need you messing everything up! We are fine and we'll stay that way if you leave us to it!"

"That is not the impression that I received from Amarat. From his perspective you a barely a step away from suicide."

Maddrell's head hung. "Amarat said that?"

"Loosely. Fifty vampires and that number is falling, am I right?"

Maddrell closed his eyes. "Yes, damn it all."

"Perhaps it is time for you to consider a new course of action, then. It seems obvious to me that all you are doing is starving yourselves to death. Which would you prefer, Maddrell; to possibly die fighting for a better future or to definitely die, rotting slowly in a shadow?"

"When you put it like that it seems so easy…" he said. "But when it comes to doing it…I've done too much fighting and had too many people dependant on me. So many that trusted me and I failed them. I just can't carry that weight any more."

"Then let me bear it."

"Let you bear it…" for a second he seemed ready to agree…and then he exploded. Without warning he bore Kain to the ground, straddled his chest to keep him down, hooded his wings to keep Khila from interfering and attempted to throttle him with his claws. "Are you mad! Do you think for a second that I would let you near them! Never! Do you hear me! Never!"

Maddrell's biggest mistake during this was not making sure that Kain's arms were pinned and he soon realised his error as a fist was driven solidly into his stomach. He was then met by an almighty shove that tossed him halfway down the corridor with a resounding crack as he landed.

Kain rubbed his own now sore neck and picked himself up off the floor. Well that was unexpected.

But even after that Maddrell wasn't finished. He fixed his dislocated shoulder (due to the impact with the floor) and prepared to charge again.

The feud could have lasted hours if it were not for another of Khila's timely interventions. Her first thought was to scream again but decided not to because she wasn't sure ho the sound would carry against the stone tunnels and if it might end up hurting her. So, instead she rushed behind Maddrell, grabbed his belt and tore it off cloth and all.

The effect was instantaneous; Maddrell yelped and folded his wings in front of himself, everything forgotten.

Khila started giggling and skipped to Kain's side while waving the breechclout manically. "Does this help?" she asked.

"…yes…" he would never have thought of that. It was quite effective though; Maddrell was now far to busy trying to blindly find his way into a room to worry about wanting to kill anyone.

One groping hand located the open door of the room Khila had previously been in, he dashed inside and slammed the door behind him. "I hate you too!" he screeched. "You are so lucky that this room is mine and I have spare things in here!"

While Maddrell re-dressed, Kain was able to calm his boiling temper and check on Khila's condition. "How are you feeling? Not sick or faint?"

"No, I'm fine now thank you. I don't know what came over me, I just felt so tired. Oh, you must think me so pathetic; passing out so easily like that for no reason."

"Do you feel well enough to go on or do you need some more time to rest?"

"I'll survive. Are we going now?"

"As soon as Maddrell is decent and ready to show the way…and isn't trying to kill me."

"Well, if he does, you know what to do to get him to stop." She discarded the torn breechclout. "Are you alright? He hit you quite hard."

"Nothing to worry about. That was rather resourceful of you."

"Thank you. It was all I could think of. Given time I'm sure I could have thought up something a little more imaginative but still, it worked. And I'm glad it did; things could have gotten very embarrassing if it hadn't."

The door was thrown open, slamming against the wall and swinging back to nearly hit an irate but dressed Maddrell in the nose. His sartorial elegance now consisted of a breechclout identical to the one that had been ripped from him.

"Let's go then." he growled, as though every word had to be forced out between clenched teeth. "I want you the hell out of here and if that means I have to help you then so be it."

"Are you mad with me?" Khila asked as he stormed off down the corridor, heading swiftly back to the gate.

"What do you think, Kitten?"

"I'm sorry…but it was for your own good; for your safety and wellbeing."

"Hah!"

Kain followed at a leisurely pace and was content to simply listen to the two of them.

Khila was desperately apologising for stripping him and he was doing his very best to distance himself from her.

Since he had discovered just what and who she was he seemed to be rather avoidant of her.

All three returned to the gate and made their way though another tunnel, this one damp and littered with moss and lichen, after the tunnel came another canyon path that was practically indistinguishable from the ones that had brought them to the Refuge in the first place.

All through this Kain remained quiet while Khila and Maddrell repaired the crack in their newborn friendship.

The pathway eventually opened up revealing the stone sealed mouth of the pipeline in the dry drained pool; the river that had once fed it with stagnant water and allowed access for the Rahabim had been dammed and diverted.

The dry pool ground was dark with sandy silt not unlike millions of minute glassy black beads and flakes of ash. Dead, dying and rotting trees had grown over the pool like an organic and once living roof so that only thin bright streams of moonlight were able to penetrate between the branches and shine through like ghostly spears, each silvery shaft illuminating the dust and small insects in the air within them.

Kain, Khila and Maddrell dropped silently down into the main body of the arid pool and began to cross to the Pipe mouth.

"I can't decide whether I think it is beautiful or ghastly." Kain heard Khila whisper. It was indeed a tough choice to make for it possessed the qualities of a dream space and a nightmare realm.

"Settle for ghastly." Maddrell advised her. "This place is a morgue. No Vetus vampire has been here since the Pipeline was sealed. Hylden warriors trapped dozens of Alukas in the pool whilst it was drained and left them to the sun; it took days for them to die because of how little light can penetrate the trees and there was nothing we could do to save them," his voice was shot with shame, "the most we could do to aid them was to end their suffering."

"You did the right thing." Khila told him.

"I wasn't as simple as that, you have no idea how much it hurt to kill my own cousins and hear them thank me for doing so. None of them deserved that, I didn't deserve that." Now he sounded almost angry.

"Don't presume that just because I have lived my life as a pet that I do not understand the torture you have suffered." Khila replied.

"You only know physical pain, Kitten. You have no concept of the scars that can form on the soul."

"Yes I do." She snapped back, and then she began to rub her claws again. "It was some thirty years ago…I was following Caucahn on a routine inspection of the Workers lodgings in the back of the castle, he rarely let me out of his sight you see…while we were there we saw that one female worker was very ill; terminally ill, but she was also eight and a half months pregnant…Caucahn ordered that the baby be removed from her so that he did not loose two valuable slaves but the workers refused even though he threatened them with death and worse. In the end he turned to me and…" she clutched her claws tight to her chest, "he made me tear the baby out of her with my bare claws. The mother died, of course, but the baby survived and now I see him in the castle and I know that if I had not ripped him from his mother's womb he would not be suffering today. At least all that you did was provide a release for the ones you cared for. I, on the other hand, imprisoned and set an existence of misery for a man because I was too afraid to defy my owner."

Now Kain finally knew why she kept rubbing her claws; she could still feel the blood and could still feel the baby boy kicking and screaming as she pulled him from the woman's swollen belly. It wasn't that she detested the blood…it was that it was a reminder of how weak she was; unable to disobey.

For once Maddrell had nothing to say, no witty retort of clever comeback.

"I know it can't be the same." She said. "But it is similar, at least. Please don't think that you are alone. How many pets do you think have been forced to endure the same things as I? If you would just stop hating Kain for a second you might see what it is that he is trying to do."

The silence that followed was unnerving.

"Perhaps." Kain said to break it. "We can move ourselves from such happy subjects long enough to pursue the task at hand."

"You're right." Khila, turned to face the pipe. "We mustn't be sidetracked."

Kain inspected the bricks that had been piled up to block the entrance in a hurry by human workers. Already the mortar was cracking and falling away. Three good strikes from the Soul Reaver and a well aimed kick saw to it that the bricks fell around him in a thick cloud of dust.

Beyond the brick dust the wide tunnel of the pipeline stretched out before them, an endless black hole of stone and more brickwork. It was impossible to see though the darkness, even with vampiric eyes.

"We have to go in there?" Khila gulped apprehensively.

"Correct."

"Really…but it's so…dark…"

Maddrell began to laugh. "Whoever heard of a vampire that was afraid of the dark?"

Kain ignored him as best he could, with the hope of setting an example for Khila. She didn't need to be made any more nervous than she already was. "Ready?" he asked her.

"I'll never be ready. Are you sure that you memorised the way? If we get lost…oh dear…."

"Just trust me. Are you capable of doing that?"

"Yes." she said quietly "Umm…how am I going to follow you if I can't see you? It will echo in there and I might mistake the sound of your steps and go the wrong way."

He offered her a hand. "Don't let go."

She smiled and took the offered hand in one of her own. "Alright. I'm ready now."

Kain took a moment to look over his shoulder. "Maddrell, you are welcome come with us if you so wish…if you can keep your aggression to yourself for once in your life…"

"I hate tight spaces." Maddrell replied. "Are you, uh, going to come back? If you succeed that is. Not that I give a damn, its just that I want to know if I have to prepare the Refuge for being invaded by you again and if I have to wear armoured underwear." He added as he shot a glare at Khila.

Khila coughed, smiled and rubbed the back of her head with her free hand. "I'm still sorry about that."

"Just get going, will you?" He grumbled, trying to forget.

And so it was that they parted company on awkward but amusing terms.

Maddrell took to the heavens, kicking up a whirlwind of silt and dirt as he went; his great wide wings slamming against the air as though he was daring the sky to stop him.

"Shall we then?" Kain made an elaborate gesture to the pipe mouth as soon as Maddrell was out of sight.

"Well, there is no time like the present." Khila said, nodding.

Yes. He agreed mentally. No time except the present. All other options have been eradicated.

The further they journeyed down the tunnels, the more profound the crushing sensation of claustrophobia became; even Kain could feel it and could also feel Khila clinging hold of him even tighter though her own fear.

Though they could no longer see them, the rounded walls seemed to be tightening around them.

Each footstep echoed heavily no matter how lightly they trod and it seemed that the echoes would never die away, more likely they would just fade and quieten and travel on forever ahead of them, never disappearing completely…and what would they do if that happened to them? What if Kain missed a turning and led them the wrong way and they ended up wandering forever until they died of starvation? Where would the bats go if Kain's blood hunger became too great? And Khila…would her body just lie here in the dark, lost and forgotten with only the echoes to mourn her passing?

It didn't bear thinking about; Kain pushed it from his mind and focused on the tunnel map he had fixed in his head. I know exactly where I am going. He told himself. My hand has been on the wall all this time so I know that I haven't missed a turning. Ah, and here is the next one. Again he dragged Khila around another unseen corner in the ink black darkness.

The cold in the tunnels was piercing and scraped across his skin like fresh ice, almost cold enough to leave flesh raw. Cold was not the right description, it was more like ice fire. Any human down there would have died of frostbite, hypothermia and cold burns all at the same time.

Though he knew where he was going, could see the route in his head, could see how far they had come and how far they had left to go Kain still felt as though all that was happening was that they were going in many small circles that made up one big circle. After a while it seemed as though the tunnel was pulling them along, not physically of course but in some way it seemed as though the darkness and the echoes were guiding their steps. It was as though something was agreeing with their intentions and encouraging them to continue, gently pulling them along.

There was no light to mark their exit but Kain knew that it would be heralded by the tunnel coming to a stop. His hand touched the wall ahead. The exit was just above his head; more rotten bricks if he was lucky, thick iron bars if he wasn't.

He drew the Reaver and probed upwards with it. Disturbed brick dust fell over his upturned face.

It was an awkward job that involved a lot of reaching and jumping but eventually he managed to knock the bricks out of place. On the down side, most of them hit him on the head but at least the way out was clear.

Even with the bricks gone no light came through. Just as Khila had said, the pipeline opened out into an abandoned chamber and thus there was nothing to illuminate it. They climbed up and then were truly walking blind.

They headed straight forwards, climbed upward some more (presumably out of the dry pit/pool area) and then kept walking until they encountered another wall which Kain followed with one hand until the stone gave way to wood; the door out…hopefully.

He snaked his hand down, following the grain, until his claws brushed the handle.

The door creaked open on rusted hinges and what he guessed was the corridor beyond was just as black as the tunnel but thankfully warmer.

Kain felt Khila pulling him forwards. "Where are you going?" He whispered.

"I know the layout of the castle." She replied quietly. "This cellar should have the same layout as the ground floor and that means I should be able to get us out of here; I know this place like the back of my hand."

"Lead the way."

After a good few minutes, several turns and winding staircase later, light returned to them and the interior of the castle opened up before them.

To be continued…

Author's Note – Finally! Getting rid of Maddrell should stop the major part of the OOCness. I didn't realise how silly it was getting…sorry. I'll try harder from now on and will go back at some point to re-do old chapters. This update was late because of coursework. On my profile page you'll now find update estimates as well as my drabble.

A Short Note On Essence For Everyone – a lot of you seem to be getting the wrong end of the stick. Try to think of Essence tracing like you would trace back a family tree. To get Melchiah you would have to trace through a Melchahim ect ect. Also; once Essence is 'de-mutated' to any stage in the line the previous stages mean nothing and are not retained. The host body the essence is put in becomes a clone (negating gender, of course).

Anyways…

Smoke – Woah, that's a lot of thoughts…Khila's own abilities have nothing to do with Essence (see above note) they were merely developed due to the situations she was in. She lived constantly on the brink of death and so obtained a presence in the Spectral Realm. The hydrokinesis is down to the water tortures.

Aleks – I'm sorry I've not been e-mailing! Soooo sorry! I feel all rude…I'm glad your still reading.

Windra – Yay! Back again! Khila is less of a daughter and more of an identical twin sister.

Lunatic Pandora 1 - …mmm…that is quite creepy now I think of it. And funny too in away…tee hee.

Varyssa – Sorry but I had to ditch Maddrell…he spawns too much OOCness. He'll probably be back but I doubt it will be till the end or something.

Biohazard – No, I'm pretty sure the Hylden are not hydrophobic. Maddrell would never betray Kain. Sure, he hates his guts but he hates the Hylden even more than that. He would never do anything to help the Hylden even to save the Vetus. He's convinced he and the Vetus are doomed anyway.

Selphie Fan – I'm a penny! Woohoo! I've never been a penny before. Heehee.

Raiden-sama – the OOCness will be eventually cut out. Well…there haven't been many 'edifices'…also, I've never been good at monologueing. Well have to see what changes my brain can throw at me in the future and I'll re-post chapters. If you have any ideas feel free to throw them at me.

Eye Of Apocalypse – See note. Vorador would not be possible and Janos would only happen if you could trace through the Heart of Darkness…guess you could as that was what made Kain…Hnh…yeah…and as for Janos, I presume that after he gets possessed in Defiance he gets taken to fuel the Mass in BO2 and when he got thrown into the Hylden Gate in BO2 I assume the Hylden down there would have killed him…I could be all wrong but that's what I'm basing things on. He won't be appearing. Sorry.

J martinz – There you go; Kain TK'd Maddrell. Mwaahahaha. I could have made it better but I was pressed for time.