Disclaimer – I don't own Legacy of Kain. If I did, I wouldn't be doing this.

Beyond the Edge: Additional

(These are the odd bits that got written because I was asked to or I just fancied doing them at the time but had no place for them in the actual plot.)

Title - Obsession

Rating - PG-13…err…T.

Genre - Horror/Angst/Drama

Location – It's a bit self evident when you read it but it was meant to happen in the space between where Khila leaves Kain while he sleep and before the voices turn up.

Type – Removed.

Notes – There was always meant to be a flashback but I cut it out half way through writing it because I thought that the fic was starting to become too Khila-centric and I figured that her past was evident enough without it.

-x-

"Still…I'm glad you came back." She said as she looked over at him, even though she knew he couldn't hear her.

She figured that she should leave him to his rest and so left the small room. She was a quiet person who could spend an indefinite amount of time doing absolutely nothing at all but she felt it rude to remain when she had not been told to; that she was invading his privacy by seeing him so vulnerable.

She went back to the Pillars room and sat herself neatly in the throne, crossing her legs and smoothing her dress out over them. With a bowed head and rubbing her claws in her lap she did what she did best; she daydreamed, remembered and thought quietly.

She still couldn't quite believe that asleep upstairs was the real Kain; the legend. She remembered all of the things she had read about him…how fascinated she had been. She would sneak into the library on many an occasion, grab the same volume and engross herself in its contents, learning all she could.

Caucahn told her repeatedly and frequently that she looked like him and that was why she risked severe punishment to absorb all that was available about him.

Her master had treated her so badly all because of her resemblance to the vampire that was said to be some kind of prophesised destroyer of the sovereign race. Caucahn had only ever caught her reading once in her whole time with him and he had had strange reaction…it had been after one of his more malicious moods…

Shaking uncontrollably in fear and pain, she huddled in a corner of Caucahn's bed chamber, holding herself tight and trying not to look at the blood, her own blood that smeared her body and most of the room around her. Above her hovered the same sickening sadistic grin that Caucahn always wore while he 'played' with her and that had been a particularly fun night for him…so fun that he thought it such a shame that it had been over so quickly. Still…there was more than one way to amuse himself with his little pet.

With a worryingly gentle hand he ran his fingers through her hair, brushing it out of her sweat slick face and tear stung eyes. "This," He said calmly, "is what reminds me most of that foul beast; it's exactly the same as his. I keep thinking that I should have it dyed black.

His vaguely peaceful composure disappeared in a split second and he viciously grabbed a thick handful of her hair so he could use it to pull her up to her feet and slam her against the wall. She yelped and grabbed at his hand to no avail.

"But I think that removing it would be far more satisfying." he sneered, yanking harder.

He didn't even bother to go to the sideboard to collect a pair of scissors, he simply just began to tear her hair straight out of her scalp while she screamed and blood began to seep down her face and over his hands.

It wasn't the first time and neither would it be the last, but it never got any easier. As he continued to rip out bloody chunks and strands he roared and yelled at her, calling her by the name that he despised so greatly; Kain, the Hylden's greatest single adversary. She looked quite like him and it caused Caucahn great pleasure it see her face twisted in agony and distress. When it was discovered that she hadn't turned out right they had offered to make him another but he had chosen to keep her…purely so he could pretend.

After a while, as always, he grew bored of her. Her screaming would never lessen, her protests and struggles would not be quelled; though he could make her tremble and shriek he could never break her…and when that sank into his frozen soul he would discard her, before rebellion could grow within. He had to leave her with the memory of fear. This time was no different. Grasping her tightly around one wrists so that he could feel her bones twisting under his palm he threw her out into the corridor and slammed the door shut without even a glance to her, tossing her aside as if she were a piece of rubbish, an unwanted item.

Same as ever she curled up into a ball in the same spot she had fallen and waited for the pain to go away. None of the worker servants or sovereign guards took even a glance at her; they just stepped around the bloodstained pet and went about their duties. The workers knew to get on with their jobs or face punishment and the guards knew not to touch Lord Caucahn's favourite toy.

Breathing heavily to comfort herself, to remind herself she had not become a true still and rotting corpse, she waited for her wounds to knit together and for her hair and scalp to re-grow. Eventually, with the skin smooth over her head, the threads of white snaked their way out, pristine in their flawless and unstained colour, until they lay back over her sweat damp shoulders and the floor around. When she felt the last of the shakes fade away, she crawled back to her feet and then ran full-tilt for the small space she called her own.

Her master had assigned her a place to go to when he had no use for her; a tiny cell, barely big enough move about in. There was just enough space to awkwardly dress, undress and to curl into a corner to sleep. Caucahn had given her nothing for it; nothing to sleep on nor anything to light it, but she didn't care. She left it dark because she knew that shadows were the only things that did not hurt her and she left the floor without a covering because she slept so little anyway. She fished around in the dark for a clean dress and quickly clothed herself in it.

For a while she just sat in the dark and enjoyed the fact that she was utterly alone…she remembered that when she was first brought here she had wished for company that would not want to make her scream. But now she knew that there was no-one in the world who could feel anything more than disgust for her and resigned herself to staying away from everyone and everything.

Well, nearly everything. There was one thing that she could think of that she actually enjoyed doing to pass the time. It was, albeit, a dangerous thing but it was a pastime of a sort nonetheless.

She was completely ignored, as per usual, as she wandered around. Every so often she might pass a visiting sovereign who would give her a look which suggested she was diseased but otherwise she was invisible to the world, making her way to the library that Caucahn kept in one of the highest regions of the castle. Venturing up numerous flights of stairs, countless corridors, the miniature museum (which she took pains not to look at the contents of as it often upset her) a hall of sorts she reached the door of the library itself. It was at this point that the chose to halt and lean briefly against the library door. It was rare that anyone but Caucahn should proceed past the display room but she always checked just in case. Who knew what kind of hell he would find for her to suffer in if she were found doing what she was about to do. Satisfied that she was utterly alone she opened the door by a fraction and slid inside without a sound.

The library was, to put in into short words, massive. For private collection it was undisputedly the largest in Nosgoth. Obviously the official libraries would hold more but Caucahn's was uniquely vast, being owned by one who hunted down and bought every single one himself for its rarity value. Every scrap of parchment and paper in the place was either one of a kind or one of an extremely small number…either that or they had a story behind them as well as in them.

She knew exactly which shelf she wanted and exactly where her desired tome would be as she always put it back in the place she had originally got it from about a month ago when she had started reading it. She was a slow reader, never really having anything remotely describable as an education, so she was still only near the beginning of the two and half inch thick volume but she was persistent and diligent and now spent every single moment she could wrapped up in its contents; the life and times of one of the old rulers of Nosgoth, Kain.

It mystified her as to why Caucahn was so insistent that he have this book when he despised the long dead vampire so greatly. She understood other things, like the murals depicting Kain's death and even the way she was treated for looking something like him…but why would her sovereign master want a book written by workers hands during the sovereign conquest of Nosgoth that spoke of Kain in an almost reverent manner, recalling the stories of him passed down by word of mouth through the bloodlines of his sons?

If she was going to be called his name then she was damn well going to know as much about him as she could…maybe one day when she had committed most of it to memory she might surprise Caucahn by acting like him. 'See if you like that' she though to herself. Though in her heart she realised she would probably never find the courage to do such a thing and the punishment would be beyond anything she could imagine…but to see Caucahn falter for just a second would more than likely make it all worthwhile.

She shuffled herself into a corner near the door; flipped back to the page she had last stopped on and lost herself in the stories and the detailed drawings.

Unfortunately this was not the best of days to engage in such an activity, as she had reached quite an interesting part and thus she was quite unaware of the footsteps reaching the door. She sat by the door so that she could hear someone approach, and if she did she would hurriedly put the book away and then make it look as if she were cleaning or generally trying to be something along the lines of useful. However, this time she didn't hear Caucahn coming and was smashed against the wall as he flung the doors open. He was in a bad mood due to some rather bad news bout the recent actions of the Vetus vampires. Striding into the library he was, at first, unaware that his pet was behind the door with a slightly torn book in her lap and nursing a broken nose and sore face through her muzzle. He turned, annoyed, to see what had been left lying around to stop the door slamming against the wall as he had wanted it to and was somewhat surprised to see her; so surprised, in fact, that for a second he merely gawped. Of course he knew that she dared to venture up here every so often but he had never imagined that she did so to read. He hadn't even though she could, let alone would want to. He didn't remain dumbfounded for long and was soon back to his normal ways; grabbing her by the collarbone and tossing her aside while snatching the book from her grasp.

"Who told you to come up here!" he roared, smacking her around the face with the hardback volume he had snatched. "Well, answer me!"

"No one!"

"Then why are you here!"

"I…I'm sorry…"

He, finally, looked at which of the books it was that he was presently holding. "This. You were reading this? Hah! So, this is what's been behind it; getting ideas were you?" he assumed that it was what she had absorbed from the pages that made her so hard to break…she must learning something from it. He couldn't let it turn into a greater problem…just like always it was imperative that he stopped any ideas before they fully bloomed.

In half the time it took her to get up to the library she was dragged back down again by one hand behind Caucahn who had a determined expression on his face and the book tucked under one arm. He took her out to the other side of his castle, to a balcony overlooking the city he ruled.

On either side out on the balcony were two braziers on iron stands, one of which Caucahn grabbed and moved to the centre.

He then let her go and waved his arm over the view. "You see all of this, pet? Do you?"

"Uh…yes, sir."

"Do you have any idea how long it has been this way? How long Nosgoth has been under the rule of the Hylden." He seemed quite calm…which terrified her more than the times when he was doing his best to make her cry.

"No, sir…"

"It's been this way since far before any living creature's memory…save, perhaps, one of those disgusting Vetus." He frowned at this thought. "But no matter. All you need to understand is that sovereigns rule, workers do as they are told and vampires stay quiet and be good little toys unless they want to spend an eternity in agony. That is the way things are and always shall be. Understand?"

"Yes, sir." She was exceptionally nervous now, why the hell did he drag her all the way up here just to tell her what she had been told all of her life?

"Everyone stays in their rightful place and the world turns. Just as it should. Which is more than can be said for the time when this creature walked freely about the place, daring to think he was any better than the rest of the scum he calls a species." At this point he waved the book at her. "He's dead now. Well and truly dead and we should all be glad of it."

She merely stood and watched him as he snarled and then dropped the book, open, into the brazier that he had moved, on top of the burning coals.

"I have a meeting with Lady Lorfae for the next half hour or so," Caucahn announced, taking hold of her muzzle and dragging her head around to face him so that she had no choice but to turn her gaze from the pages that were already darkening and shrinking away as the heat destroyed them. "And I hear she has brought her own pet with her. So, after the meeting I expect to find you in my chamber and in a compliant mood. The meeting will be quite stressful and Lorfae and I will require some…fun…to ease it. I assure you that you and her little toy will entertain us."

With that he walked away.

She didn't spare a thought for what he had just said and the implications of it as her mind was completely centred on the leather bound pages that had caught light and were quickly enveloping the whole thing in flames.

Without a thought she plunged her hand into the fire and coals, extracting the scorched and charred volume before further damage could be done and clutched it to her chest as if in a comforting embrace, effectively extinguishing the flames. She held the book out in front of her. "You poor thing." She said, as if it were a living entity that could understand her strange sympathy for it.

Rifling through the pages she found that it had not been open at the middle when he had dumped it down to be destroyed. It had only really been the front cover and the title page that had touched the coals. What had turned to ash luckily seemed to be pages she had already struggled her way through.

Without another word she retreated to her little cubby hole, leaving the door open to allow some light in, and read until the time her presence was required.

Khila sighed and looked back around the chamber. It had been a long while since she had finished reading that book and in the end Caucahn found that she had 'rescued' it…in fact, it had been for exactly that reason she had been tied up in the rain just a few long hours ago. Because of her obsession with him, she had been out there for him to find.

"How poetic." She mumbled to herself, and wondered if he was still asleep.

-END-

Author's Note (Yes, another one) – Hope you liked. As I mentioned before it never made it into the fic because I wanted it centred on Kain, not Khila and I thought it might have begun to give away what she was a little early because of the emphasis on his and her similarity in appearance.

Anyway, woohoo! 100+ reviews party! Cookies and cake for all! You are wonderful people, thankee muchly.

Before I go I have a few announcements –

1) The prequel to Beyond the Edge will be uploaded next week, so keep an eye out if you are interested. It's still called Flight of the Butterfly Man, it's centred on Maddrell and Raziel will feature in it. (And he's a lot more Raz-like than how he ended up in BtE, I promise)

2) BtE Additional is not quite over yet, more is on its way but it may take a while. I am also trying to come up with a sequel.

3) If you liked the way Kain was portrayed in BtE (ie, him actually having emotions as well as being a killer and tyrant when need be) thenyou might enjoymy one-shot Necessary Evil, go check it out.

Well, I'm off for now to edit FotBM. Hope I'll see you there.