Raziel knew very little of how offices were run; that need was one left to Rahab, who had liked sitting behind a desk and complaining loudly about silly little things.

"This room is far too bright to work in."

"Oh sh-"

"I know, I know, but I can't move."

"Ah- ah!"

"But I can't. You see, the alignment of the desk in this room to the wall, compared to the furniture in the other rooms..."

"-erk! RAHAAAAB!"

"...and I happen to like this shade of magnolia, in contrast to the pale olive green of the carpet. Quite refreshing, perfect for -"

"Turel, dear, must you bleed so profusely over my armchair?"

But he was fairly certain that the Elder God's office was not run to any level of respectability. Walking? What about company transport? Even Kain had had that. Admittedly it was only Kain who had it, but that was irrelevant. Still, this was what Raziel had been dealt, so he walked.

Though, he quickly grew bored of walking.

He scanned his surroundings. He looked at them again, with something of an accusing glare, until he was quite satisfied they were devoid of any other life. Or unlife. He raised his claws in front of him, like he was holding a sword. He dropped his stance, and swung the imaginary sword in front of him, darting back and forth, hiding in any convenient shadows.

He added sound effects.

The Sanctuary of the Clans still loomed, despite its state of decay. Away from the shadows cast by the huge edifice Thelma and Bill were standing by a bonfire nearby trying to keep warm.

"It's a bit nippy today, don't you think, dear?"

"Uh?" Bill grunted.

"I was just saying it's a bit nippy." Thelma said, adding more emphasis to her words.

"Yes, very good day for it." Bill replied absently wrapping his tartan blanket tighter around his shoulders. Thelma gave a look common to old married women the world over and went back to her knitting.

"FWSSSH!" Raziel hissed, loudly, and jumped around a large pillar, bringing the imaginary sword down. "CHHHNK!". He jumped up and rounded on yet another bonfire.

"Mind who you're jumping on, sonny. You could've frightened the lady." Said a grouchy voice.

Raziel's eyes widened. The bonfire was jealous.

Bill, having shoved Raziel from his person, brushed himself off and looked at the newcomer with suspicion.

Thelma, in the time honoured tradition of women over certain age everywhere, however instantly started fussing over Raziel. "Now Bill, don't be too hard on the lad. Poor thing looks half starved." Turning to Raziel she smiled. "Would you like some pudding dear? You look like you could use a good meal in you. Come on nearer the fire, don't be shy luvvie." She half shoved Raziel nearer the fire. "There, that's better, dear." She cooed.

He blinked at Thelma, then looked towards Bill. "Who are you?" He said dumbly. "I don't recognise your..." flayed rack of flesh? "... dentures." He blinked again, and vaguely recalled his duty to the Elder God. "They look vampiric."

'Yes, dear. We are vampires. Though Bill has gone to eating black pudding. Unfortunately the poor dear's teeth fell out some time back and the dentures aren't very good quality so they not functional." Thelma looked lovingly at her partner.

"Work just fine."Bill muttered under his breath.

"Don't be silly dear, just because the young lad's here, there's no need to be embarrassed."

Bill scowled at her, folded his arms and went to defiantly staring at the flames.

"Oh, I see." Raziel said, a little too understandingly. "So..." He said, thoughtfully, and took a long look at the pair. He prided himself on being a good salesman, and being a good salesman required tailoring his approach for each customer. He glanced up and around, finally taking in his location. "Do you live here, then?" He tried to sound interested, but the sight of the Sanctuary of the Clans in ruins was tugging at him... it had been so long...

'Ye..." Thelma's words were cut off as the ground shook.

"Sorry." Came the Elder God's voice. "Kain's failure to decently impale himself when he should have has made my job very stressful. It's given me terrible wind. I do apologise. Oh, by the way, Raziel, remember your cause."

Raziel stumbled, and looked quite thoroughly disgusted. "You should see a vet." He grumbled, and hoped it was too low for Thelma to hear.

Thelma brushed herself off from where she had stumbled. "Deary me, that's happening more lately. As I was saying, yes, we do live here. Our last residence was too cold for Bill here, here is much nicer. Brings back good memories."

He turned to her. "Yes, being here does bring back memories." He said, almost wistfully, and looked toward the remains of the building. "Another fitting tribute to its Master's corruption." He narrowed his eyes in its direction. "Well, anyway, I'd love to stay here and chat, but," He brightened, because it didn't do well to kill someone without a smile, "I wonder, I work for the Registry Office, and I am here to promote the Elder God's new Marriage and Impalement scheme. May it interest you?"

"Could do dear, tell me all about it." Thelma said, smiling.

Raziel coughed. "I take you two are already married? With the Elder God's new Marriage and Impalement scheme, it is no longer a requirement for vampires to be hunted and ruthlessly murdered by agents of the Elder God..." he explained, this time with more confidence and hand gestures, "... impale yourselves on spikes." He finished, and looked at her hopefully.

"I can understand your mistake luvvie, but me and Bill here are not married." Thelma glared over at Bill.

"No need for it." He muttered and went back to dozing, all that defiant staring having worn him out.

"So you could get married yet?" He asked. "For the sake of the register?"

"Bill. Bill, wake up you silly sod." Thelma called at Bill who was now snoring.

"Uh? Wha..?"Bill jumped at the rude awakening.

"Listen, this young man here has said we can get married rather than die now. Isn't that a good idea."

"I keep telling you, woman. I'm not marrying you. There's no point."

"Bill Dumahim." Thelma raised her voice at him."You will marry me or you will die now. And I'll help him."

"See, that's my point, woman. We already have the same clan name, we don't need to get married." Bill argued "There's no point."

"I also shared my clan name with what once ran to thousands of individuals." Thelma yelled at him. "There is every point, I want to get married. It's proper."

"Fine, fine. I've been arguing with you for centuries. If it'll shut you up moaning." He looked tired and beaten. "You'd better marry us then lad or I'll never hear the last of it. Again."

You better marry us... Raziel startled, though not visibly. Bloody Elder God didn't tell him he'd have to perform the ceremony too! He shuffled his feet, and looked at them. He could remember a little of that play Kain had once dragged them all to see, when his brethren were fledglings, ("As my Lieutenants, it is necessary for you to have a healthy knowledge of the theatre." It was the tenth on Dad's Rules) but he'd fallen asleep and only caught the '...married" at the end. Never mind, he thought, and hoped that they had as much experience with weddings as he did. Though, from the look of Thelma, if it wasn't perfect... he almost shuddered. "Erk."

"You do know how to do it lad?" Bill asked. "Just something simple, and quick." he muttered the last two words under his breath.

Thelma glared at him."Oh well." She sighed. "I've been waiting seven hundred years for this. I would have been fussy once. Now, I shall just be thankful I got what I wanted in the end."

Raziel clicked his claws and nodded. "Very well." He pushed them to stand next to each other, and took a place before them. "Simple and quick?" He asked quietly, then, "Do you agree to be married? No, don't answer, that'll only confuse things - in that case, you are. Married, that is." He would've beamed, did he have the appropriate jaws to do so.

Thelma hugged Bill who responded with a perfunctory grunt. She then turned and hugged Raziel. "Thank you, deary. What happens now?" Turning back to the long-suffering Bill. "I hope you're taking me on a honeymoon now."

Bill groaned.

"Well, it says here -" he said, pushing the tattered ruins of something that might've once been an arm guard to his wrist, and reading something from the underside of his arm, "Those who choose to take advantage of the M&I scheme will be given a maximum of one (1) afternoon to complete their lives before an Agent of the Elder God will be dispatched to oversee the act of Voluntary Impalement."

Bill looked positively upbeat. "Sounds good to me." He winked at Raziel. "If you ever live with someone for seven centuries, you'll understand lad."

Thelma looked slightly more downcast. "I would have liked to see the Lake of Serenity, and the Lake of Tears at some point, but I've got what I wanted so I can die happy." She sighed and gave Raziel a heartfelt smile. "Thank you young man."

"You're quite welcome." He said, and attempted a smile again. He stood for a moment, occasionally nodding or generally acknowledging the existence of the newly-weds. He folded his hands behind his back and rocked back on his heels, and looked around absent-mindedly. After a long moment he asked, "So, do you suppose he'll be sending along another agent to ensure you're impalement, or will I have to wait here until evening?" He kicked the ground, meaningfully.

As Thelma hugged onto him with an air of contentment, Bill looked almost pleadingly at Raziel.

"Feel free to finish it now lad, I don't mind not having to wait." The meaning of the statement was unmistakable. The centuries with Thelma had been long ones. For Bill, dying was an improvement.

Raziel shrugged. "If you want." He scratched the back of his head, and wandered over to pull a spear from the wall. He handed it to Bill. "It might be awkward, but it's company policy that it must be voluntary in every way, unless you fail to it, in which case I will have to force you to give me permission to do it by means of threat of impalment or impaling you should you refuse." He gestured to his left arm.

Bill backed away a few steps for a run up.

"Hold the spear out straight lad, that's it." Bill started running at the spear, arms in the air holding his tartan blanket like a flag. "Freedom!" He yelled as the spear impaled his chest.

Thelma looked at Raziel with an anxious look. "I...I..don't think I can do that." She said. "Can I give you permission to do it for me?"

Raziel opened one eye, and peered at Thelma. "Certainly." He said, apparently unperturbed. "I'll go get you a fresh spear." He dropped Bill's at his feet. After a moment he returned with a new one. "It was nice meeting you." He said, and quite suddenly, and as sympathetically as he could manage, impaled her on it.

"Thank you, dear" She wheezed as she died.

Raziel place the spear carefully to the ground, and turned his attention to the two floating green souls. Funny, he hadn't realised just how peckish he had been.

"Well done Raziel." The Elder God thought this was a good time to talk to his new employee. He felt that the staff generally needed motivating and was currently testing the concept of being pro-active, and trying to encourage this quality in his workforce. "I feel that you are fast becoming a valued member of the team. But you really must get a move on, lots to do you know!"

Raziel looked down, frantically staring at his feet, as he was becoming used to doing every time the Elder God spoke. "Just don't send me on any team-building outings." He warned, and shook a claw at the ground. Satisfied, he went on in the direction of his clan territory. With any luck, his wardrobe, and spare trousers, might have still been in tact.

Beneath the wooden bridge, the waters of the Turbo Spin Cycle circled ceaselessly. The sound of the churning waters filled the air and there was no washing to be seen. Raziel stared down at it. He frowned, sulkily.

"So Kain never did reinstall it closer to Rahab." He whined, "Though much of Nosgoth has changed, we must still endure the humiliation of our dirty washing being spectacle to all." He noted the absence of any clothes within the vortex. "Obviously my clan is yet to learn how to bring their own washing down here. Little buggers."

The cliffs surrounding the Turbo Spin Cycle were high and foreboding. Except the bits that weren't.

Ahead of him, his clan territory loomed. Although it didn't loom quite as well as most of Nosgoth's architecture. He stopped at the gate.

"I'm back!" He called. There was no reply, except the wind, which sounded almost as foreboding as the cliffs looked. "Hello?" He tried again, quieter. It looked empty... lifeless, but that wasn't real, was it? The Razielim were just a little messy. "... I brought innocent villagers?" He said, though his voice was little less than a whisper.

He narrowed his eyes at two stray Dumahim, and growled: "My children, angsty little gits they were, gone; just like my trousers, both pairs, which are also gone." He pushed the Dumahim into their bonfire and kicked them for dying, just like everyone else seemed to have.

The Elder God was bored. He decided now was another good time to try this dynamic employee management again. " It's become a bit of a fixer-upper these days hasn't it. The Dumahim living here weren't really into home improvements. Let the destruction of your children fuel you need for registering. Melchiah awaits in that place above what they call the garden of the dead. Garden I tell you, how inaccurate a description can you give something. The Melchahim have no idea. Gardens are places with flowers and grass and lawns and small fountains usually of a naked person of some description and..." The rant continued faintly and 'garden shed' was mentioned at least twice.

Raziel listened patiently for a while, as it eased the anguish of seeing his children crushed to the ground, and he wasn't in any mood for a deep inner monologue. Then he decided that listening to his own voice whimper 'nobody knows the trouble I've seen, nobody knows my sorrow...' was far more entertaining, so he did that instead, until he found himself on the edge of Melchiah's garden.

It could only have been Melchiah's garden, as no one else he knew would have a large pavement stone, with 'Welcome to my Garden' etched into it alongside a picture of a flower, propped up against the gate. He tripped over a fishing gnome and landed in what may have once been a pond, if the moss covered remains of a large plastic flamingo were anything to go by.

Yes, it was Melchiah's garden.

There were two what looked possibly to be vampires standing next to the body of an unfortunate human. "Dibs on the arm. I scuffed my elbow earlier".

"Only if I get the right leg" said the other.

"Okay, it's a done deal."

Noticing the intruder, the two creatures turned with a snarl. "This body is ours. Get your own supplies."

Raziel recoiled, and did next what came most naturally.

"Eeeeew!"

Both of the Melchahim rushed at Raziel with quite obviously the intention of causing his person distress just to add to the mental distress they were currently causing.

"AH! No! Stop! I have no flesh! I have no flesh! You can't steal it if there's nothing to steeaal!" He lowered his arms from in front of his face. They had yet to make it halfway across the garden. Raziel watched them for a while. Repulsive though they were, they were also after him, albeit slowly. Enough, he decided as he picked up a shovel, and ran at them.

Having a shovel, flat side, smashed into the face causing a loss of balance and a fall into a conveniently located bonfire is not conducive to survival. Unfortunately for the other one, neither is a large spike to the ribcage.

Raziel steeped back from the terrible mess he'd made, picked up another rusty shovel just in case, and made his way into Melchiah's stronghold. Hopefully his brother wasn't as ugly as them.

Melchiah dragged his body around to the other side of the room to closer inspect his latest contraption. How he actually managed to do anything was beyond even him, or why he'd had the sudden urge to build a giant meat-grinder. That was definitely a decision he'd made at two o'clock in the morning having fed from someone with too high a dose of caffeine in his or her system. Just what the hell did he need a giant meat-grinder for anyway?

Flummoxed. Raziel thought it a good word for how he felt. He'd done a lot of climbing, jumping, and all sorts of stuff, but he was stuck in the same room. He pulled a block out from the wall, and pushed it to somewhere else. Then another block. Then another. And some more after that. Obviously Melchiah's taste in personal security was as good as his taste in garden decoration. His claws ached.

Melchiah sat and done a crossword puzzle while he waited for Raziel. He'd spoken previously to the Master and had been informed that Raziel would pay him a visit. He was somewhat suprised at the news. Vampires didn't normally come back from the Turbo Spin Cycle, sometimes it was seen as a miracle if the clothes came back. Socks normally didn't.

Melchiah would have obviously been lurking as far underground as he could be, because Melchiah was odd like that, so Raziel made his way down towards his youngest brother's chamber. He coughed, and knocked on the door.

"In here" a voice replied.

He opened the door, and sneakily stepped inside. "Afternoon, creature."

"Who you calling creature?" the indignant voice again replied.

"Melchiah!" It almost sounded surprised. "Ah, I knew it was you, but I've noticed that Nosgoth is full of those -" he gestured at the security camera on the wall, " - and knowing that the one watching is also the one in charge of my holidays and hotel fees, I have to make it look good at important times. Just in case he's feeling generous. We don't get company transport, you see."

"I'd complain about that if I were you. Do you have a union? By the way, you're looking a bit skinny since I saw you last." Melchiah looked at his elder brother.

"And you're looking a bit like a giant, decomposing mass." Raziel grunted. "Anyway, my clan, what did you do to them? And my spare trousers? Where are they?"

"Yeah, I know I can't say anything. I'm glad I'm no longer in possession of a mirror. In answer to your questions, nothing and I have no idea. You would have done better to stay in the wash. The worlds gone quite uggy from what I've heard. Besides, do you really think the Master would risk his empire on some radio interference?"

Melchiah looked at Raziel knowingly. Raziel appeared not to notice, and continued to speak, waving his arms in the air.

"I assure you neither I or my children would have ever stooped to perching on the cable wires, so there would have been no radio interference. Anyway, I would have made them special perches and nesting boxes did they show sign of it. And however uggy the world is, I have seen enough cleanliness to last me an absurdly long lifetime. I now understand the meaning of whiter than white when it remains to be only white in the end; which completely defeats the object of Kain throwing me in the washing machine, anyway, as with that information I have surpassed every living being, including him."

"Raz, you were supposed to say about me talking in riddles to that last comment, then I could have gone, 'Ah!' and nodded my head knowingly and all mysterious looking. Now you've totally ruined it." Melchiah looked exasperated and unhappy. "It's unfair, that as the youngest, I never get things to work the way I want them to." He pulled himself over toward the meat-grinder. "I invented this, and I can't get it to work either. It's a conspiracy." He said sullenly.

Raziel nearly looked sympathetic. "Sorry Mel, you just aren't the type to speak in riddles. But this," he said, looking up at the meat-grinder, "this is a riddle. Why did you invent a meat-grinder?"

"I don't know really. I just did." Melchiah looked slightly sheepish. "I wanted to build something large and impressive, and Dad normally finds some obscure reason on his 'list' as to why I can't do it. I found nothing on the list pertaining to meat-grinders. So I presume I just thought, why not?"

"Rule Number Forty-Three:" Raziel recited, a distant look in his eyes, "Under No Circumstances Is Zephon To Use The Cheese Grater Without A Permission Slip From Dad And Supervision From Older/Braver/Larger/Less Squeamish Brother." He shook his head, "About as close as his rules come. It's... impressive, though." Raziel did admire it, perhaps because it was the most random creation in Nosgoth. "It doesn't work, though?"

Melchiah shook his head sadly. "I've tried everything, but I'm not having any success." He walked directly underneath it, looked up at it and then gestured with difficulty to a handle on the wall. "That handle is supposed to activate it, but somewhere along the system there must be a fault." He smiled. "I do remember that rule. But it applied to Zephon anyway." Melchiah pulled a face at the thought of his youngest elder brother. "He always was gross."

"You never had to supervise him with the cheese grater." Raziel shuddered. "That handle? Want me to try it?" Raziel asked, and walked over to it, picking at one of the wires behind it.

"Thanks Raz, though I don't suppose it'll do much good."

"It's worth a try." He said, and with some effort, pulled the lever. A low creaking noise filled the room. "Something happened."

"Not much though" Melchiah said despondently. "I don't think it's ever going to work."

"I'll try this one." Raziel hurried over to the other side of the room and pulled the other lever.

"Still nothing, Brother. But thanks for trying."

Raziel stood back and examined the lever, attempting to pull it back up again. "I think you're right." He said. "I'll try this one, anyway." He said, and wandered over to the last lever in the room. He pulled on it.

Melchiah looked up then realised he could never get his body out of the way in time. "Well, that's done it." With one last smile his final words were "The bloody handles just needed to be released."

Raziel turned away, deeming the sight to be one that might have made even his new youngest brother squirm. Particularly as Melchiah had smiled as he died; Raziel would never accuse Melchiah's offspring of being ugly again after seeing that wretched, lipless, tragic little smile.

Melchiah's soul, unfettered from his body, tried to make a run for it, in a non-running kind of way.

Raziel was rather regretting filling up on Dumahim. He choked.

Melchiah's soul tasted as good as he had looked in life.