Chapter XIX
I cast a spell to transport us back to the council chamber of the citadel after showing Raziel to the wardrobe where I still kept some of his things so he could clothe himself properly. Once that was done, we returned. I was loath to lead them back to the inner sanctum where the Elder Squid would be revealed to Kain at last, but I had no choice really. As I mentioned, I knew more now than I knew while I still lived knowingly in this world. I knew now that it wasn't Kain or Raziel who never understood anything: it was the Elder God who didn't. It wasn't Kain's fate that should have scared the Elder: it was mine.
"You are unusually solemn, even considering the situation," said Raziel. "What's the matter?"
"Hmm? Oh, nothing," I said, too quickly. Raziel obviously didn't believe me, but didn't press the matter. I had single-handedly rewritten his and Kain's fates in one fell swoop. Now it was my turn. Silently I proceeded into the Spirit Forge, and Kain and Raziel followed me. I gazed at Raziel in sad silence and he understood that I felt he should stay behind at the top of the Forge. He nodded, and I managed a smile for his sake. I was the first to jump down and land before the Elder whom I could see from the beginning, even without the Reaver's purifying fire. I glared hatefully at the gargantuan squid. "I would kill you if I could just for having that many eyeballs all in the same place," I informed him. The monster just laughed as Kain landed behind me.
"So...I am revealed to you at last," sneered old Squid-Face.
"What in the hell..." said Kain.
"I am the origin of Life... the devourer of Death," said the Elder over-dramatically. "I am the hub of the Wheel, the purifying cycle to which all souls must be drawn."
"You're forgetting 'incredibly long-winded'," I pointed out. Had the Elder had a visible mouth, it probably would have frowned.
"Did I condemn Raziel to this nightmare when I cast him into the Abyss?" Kain asked softly.
"Well, yeah," I said, "yeah, actually, you did." The room shook.
"Ah Galadriël, my child, it is good to see you again after all this time," said the Elder.
"Come again?" I asked.
"My child," repeated the monster fondly. "My daughter."
"I am none of yours!" I protested angrily. "How dare you!" The Elder laughed, obviously delighted at my fury and underlying confusion.
"Oh, but you are," he said. "From the first breath you ever drew, you were mine."
"Go back to your master, Moebius! Tell him I am not his!"
Now where did that come from? It certainly sounded like something I'd say. Oh yes, I remembered. I had been arguing with Moebius about his religion as it were. He grew frustrated and declared that I was a part of his God. That's how I had retaliated. I frowned.
"Haven't you realized yet?" asked the Elder, relishing knowing something that I didn't. "You, by the natural order of things, should never have even been conceived! Haven't you ever wondered why it was that you were born?"
"Yes, but I never sought to gain that knowledge from you," I said with as much contempt as I could muster.
"It was I who sanctioned your birth," said the Elder. "It was I who implanted your father's seed in your mother's womb. I knew she would raise you when you were stillborn. And I knew that you would grow to be the most powerful and indestructible creature on this earth. All the strengths and powers of both vampire and Hylden…none of their weaknesses. You are, for all intents and purposes, my child. And you will always be."
"Your words are poison, snake-tongue, and I do not hear them," I said. Basically, I had just called the Elder a liar.
"Deny it all you wish," replied the beast casually. "But that does not change the truth."
"Why, then?" I challenged the creature. "Why did you allegedly create me? What possible advantage could there have been for you?"
"At first, it was only an experiment," said the Elder, "but in time, I began to see that you would be most useful to me. I knew you would one day reach a point where you would stop growing, and your powers would be at their greatest. That day came a year ago when you turned sixteen. However, your father knew what I was going to do. He followed you to the Abyss when you went to grieve for your dearly departed Raziel-"
"Silence!" I hissed, but the monstrosity paid me no heed.
"-and saw my attempt to gain your soul for my own," the creature continued as though I had not spoken. "I had called to you, you remember? I showed you a path to reunite you with Raziel. You were on the brink of jumping into the swirling Charybdis that is the Lake of the Dead, where you would have drowned and I would have claimed your soul and your empty vessel as my own – for I could possess your body and collect souls who escape into the physical realm – when your damned father came and saw. He cast you into the portal between this world and the Hylden dimension, sealing you beyond my grasp. He cursed me for taking Raziel and trying to take you, and said that you were not mine. But you are, Galadriël. You are mine."
"Well, that was a lovely bedtime story Grampa, but what about the 'happily ever after' bit?" I asked sarcastically. Inside, though, I was thoroughly shaken. Everything he said had made sense. I remembered it all now. If he consumed my soul he would gain my power and strength. And my body was the only one in this world durable enough for him to possess. My stomach churned, but I willed it to be still.
"Do you still defy me?" asked the Elder, now showing the first signs of annoyance.
"Of course I defy you; I've always defied you!" I cried. "And I defy you to say you don't care, if you can! In the name of hellfire and blood, why do you continue this charade? You are no god, you are a monster! A voracious parasite cloaking its appetite in a shroud of righteousness!" I knew that Raziel was looking at me in surprise for saying exactly what he had, but I didn't, at the moment, care. The Elder too was surprised. "You fear Raziel and I because you cannot control us, and you never could! We are not chained to your demonic Wheel. And have you not realized that your Wheel has a wrench in it? You don't seem to realize that twice already Raziel has been 'redeemed in the cleansing agony of birth, death and rebirth', to use your words."
"How so?" demanded the Elder.
"He was born a human, and he died a human," I said. "Then he was reborn as a vampire, and as such he died again until you revived him as a wraith. And actually, he has undergone this cycle a third time as of late."
"What do you mean?" said the Elder, now growing angry to mask his worry. I smiled the same twisted mockery of a smile that had chilled Moebius's heart upon our first meeting. I looked up high and stretched out my hand to Raziel, who nodded and glided down to join Kain and me. The Elder's innumerable and off-putting eyeballs widened and rolled in rage and confusion when he saw Raziel restored to his original and magnificent form.
"How can this be!" thundered the monster.
"You're not as omniscient as you would like us to believe," I said with grim satisfaction. "I drew Raziel's soul – i.e., the Wraith Blade – out of his body, and so he died again. Then I used the Heart of Darkness to revive him and so he was reborn." Raziel smiled grimly.
"For all the eyes you appear to possess, you do not see much," he commented dryly.
"Indeed," I agreed. "Like Argus in the myth of Io, do you close half of your disgusting eyes at once to rest and then the other half later, but never all at once?"
"Enough!" roared the Elder. "I will have you yet!" Several of the beast's slimy tentacles advanced on us, but the Elder seemed to have forgotten about Kain, who came forward. "You may ponder the futility of your ambitions as you spend a deathless eternity beneath a mountain of rubble. You and your Soul Reaver will go equally mad as the eons pass. The Citadel of the apostates will become your living tomb."
Kain raised the Soul Reaver as one of the Elder God's tentacles advanced. "Your words are heartening-" he said as he severed the tentacle "-for you would not fear us unless we could truly do you harm."
Enraged, the Elder roared, "No! You are nothing!" and sent forth more tentacles.
Kain severed the tentacles, saying, "False God. This is the end. The final turn of your Wheel," punctuating his words with swings of the Reaver. The Elder roared like a wounded animal and attacked. "Raziel, get Soul out of here!"
"No, wait-!" I cried, but Raziel caught me around the waist and flew up to the mouth of the pit. "Raziel, no, you have to take me back-" I began, but Raziel gently laid a finger on my lips.
"We can do nothing more now," he said. "All we can do is wait and hope." I groaned loudly, but could not protest.
"There's one more destiny riddle that has to be solved," I said softly. "There's one more fate that has to be realized." Raziel did not hear me, thankfully. I knew Kain would triumph, and so I was not worried on that account. I was worried on my own. Suddenly the room shook with incredible violence, and I knew the time had come. Everything seemed to slow down, as often happens in video games during a climactic cinema sequence. I rushed past Raziel and jumped down into the pit before he could stop me. Kain was lunging for one final thrust, and I clasped both my hands around his and the Reaver's hilt, uttering words even more powerful than those used to displace Raziel's soul into the Reaver blade. The Soul Reaver – the cursed sword I had designed – glowed even brighter as it hit home into the Elder's biggest eye. He howled in agony, tentacles flailing, destroying the foundations of the Forge. I gave a small cry that no one ever heard. My lips parted and my teeth gritted. I gasped as I felt the strangest sensation…the sensation of my fangs distending from my teeth. I knew then what I had to do before it was too late. Revolting as it was, I plunged my fangs into the hateful orifice and sucked hard (that's not an innuendo, really it's not). The Elder didn't possess what a biology textbook defines as blood, but it had something. It was the most horrible, disgusting substance I had ever tasted in my life or ever would again, but still I drank. I had to take it all. It was thick, like Jell-O, only rubbery and sickening. I forced the gooey, coagulated gunk down my throat and into my outraged stomach. Finally there was no more, and I fell back with a cry of anguish. The noxious substance burned in me, filling me, killing me. I dropped to the ground, unable to move, my hands clamped over my mouth to keep me from vomiting. I was hardly aware of Kain grabbing me and teleporting to the upper level of the Spirit Forge as the room crumbled. I was only aware of the sickness inside me and my mental pleading for it to end. But who was I pleading to? The Elder God was now dead. I fell again to the ground when Kain tried to set me on my feet. I didn't even feel it. I curled up there on the ground, shivering and drenched in a cold sweat. I moaned and cried out as I writhed in pain. I forced myself to swallow the bile and gunk that came up in my throat. Raziel picked me up, cradling me in his arms in the way I had once loved to be held, but now I only wailed in agony. Every movement was pure pain. I felt my body dying from the inside out. I howled again in pain as Raziel carried me out of the room, with Kain following. I heard their voices talking from high above me, but they seemed so strangely outside of me, as though I was in a glass box and they were on the outside looking in at me.
"What in the Holy Hell could have possessed her to do that!" cried Raziel.
"I have no idea, but I could not pull her away no matter how hard I tried to," said Kain. I hadn't even known he had tried to stop me. It didn't matter. "She must have had a reason, but what could that possibly be?"
"I don't know," said Raziel, looking down on me worriedly. "But I'm afraid this will kill her or drive her to madness." I moaned again.
"Not kill," I whispered hoarsely. Even talking hurt! And I don't mean hurt as in a sore throat kind of hurt, I mean hurt. Physically! "Live. Not kill."
"Rest, my dearest," Raziel said softly, playing with my hair. "I'm going to take care of you." I half-nodded distractedly. I knew only one way to complete the transformation without losing my mind from the agony. I closed my eyes and urged my body into a self-induced coma. The last thing I heard was, "She's gone; now it'll be easier."