Post-Defiance Fan Fiction: Mirrors of Balance
By: Dragonaia
Disclaimer: The Legacy of Kain games belong to Eidos and the Silicone Knights, not to me, much though I may wish it. The OOC involved in this fiction belong to me however, Kainen/Katherine, the Voice, and the few secondary others. My retribution with be swift and horrifying.
Author's Comments: All right, I'll confess. There is a little bit of SI, if only because the Voice reminds me of me, and talks a hell of a lot like me. I know Kain may have shown a little more humility than normal, but you have to remember that this takes place immediately after Defiance, like ½ an hour after. He's not quite recovered. Also, it's not like he can kill the Voice anyway. It doesn't have a body so it's kind of pointless to get mad at it. Also, I'll be doing a Kain-style voice over for the beginning of the next chapter because somebody asked me about that. I tend to avoid writing in first person because it throws off my narration, but I shall make the effort for you my loyal readership (Yes Angie that includes you).
Chapter 2: The Portal Opens
Kain stood in the middle of the platform, kicking aside smouldering bits of broken stone with one cloven foot and surveying the destruction.
"What transpires next?" he asked haughtily. "Am I to be dazzled by the brilliance of your power again, or has this devastation put a kink in your masterful plans?"
"I know it is your way vampire, but I could do without the arrogance," the Voice replied patiently, its ghostly form coming to hover near him. "The Pillars have been weakened yes, but there are sufficient resources to suit our purposes. When the Hylden broke free from their hellish prison they created myriad dimensional tears. By utilizing one of those planar rips you should be able to open the portal entailed. With the Hylden distracting the Elder, hopefully he will not detect our movements until it is too late. This is actually the optimal point in the timeline to be attempting this."
"Should?" Kain eyed the glowing entity imperiously. "What do you mean by 'should'? You neglected to mention there was a chance I may not succeed. That hardly sounds encouraging. And suppose I do fail; what then? Will you show me how to enter the buried stronghold without the assistance you bid me to seek?" Kain didn't bother to disguise the expectation in his tone. The sword now strapped to his back was all the assistance he'd ever needed in the past, and he had no intention of changing that.
"I'm afraid not," the Voice spoke with a strange sort of fell amusement, as if inwardly chuckling at some morbid inside joke. "It would fall ill with you if you were to try and arrange a failure Kain. The portal will either open to where we intend it to go, or it will trigger a cataclysmic chain reaction that will cause reality to come apart at the seams and destroy Nosgoth and every living and non-living thing existing on it. In either case my goal is accomplished."
"And what goal is that?" Kain asked guardedly, taken aback at the being's words. Every time he thought he had the measure of the thing it would say or do something that would set him off-kilter again. His talons twitched to grasp at the hilt of the Reaver, though he knew that even the Soul Blade would do very little to the thing.
"The destruction of the Elder God of course," the Voice replied simply. "Certainly the scenario where I survive to gloat is the preferable outcome. So you needn't worry that I will deliberately sabotage you. If I was going to end existence I'd have done it millennia ago, or when I last had the chance."
"Well I certainly feel most reassured now," came the sarcastic reply.
"Now, now Kain; let's not be humble," the spirit answered flippantly. "It's not like you've never held the fate of the world in your hands before. Of course it didn't really work out all that well last time, now did it?" It let out something that could have approximated a chuckle. Kain shot it a vicious glare, but it was obvious his reaction was being pointedly ignored.
"You needn't question my motives," it continued on a more serious note. "I still retain some vestiges of mortality in the form of pale emotions, however diluted by the ages they are. I do not wish for the world to end, I just want to kill the Elder. It's not as if the future world the Elder would create will be really worth living in anyway. You've seen it Kain; you know. Most souls would thank me for sparing them that pointless round of meaningless existence and inevitability."
"I am more than aware of the implications," Kain snapped. "That is why I am here. Now tell me; how do you propose to open this portal and what do you require from me. How am I going to be of any assistance to you at all? I am a warrior, not a sorcerer, or at least not to the degree you seem to expect."
"I know that vampire, but you are the Scion, and that is all that matters. Writhing in their death-throes or not, the Pillars will obey your will."
Kain took another evaluating stare at the debris around him. "It's all very well for you to make such grandiose claims spirit. It's quite another thing altogether to see you fulfill them. Not all things are that simple. If they were, I would have slain the Abomination in the bowels of the Citadel instead of trailing along after you in pursuit of this ridiculous escapade. If you wish my help, tell me what must be done. Given the nature of things, I suspect that a series of pointless, difficult quests and puzzles lie in my immediate future."
"Not so," the Voice corrected him cheerfully. "I have already armed you with the tools you will need. See?" A blue glow alighted on the hilt of the Reaver, illuminating the completed Balance Emblem. "Imagine my surprise when Moebius mistook my silent presence for that of his 'benevolent' deity. Apparently I wasn't as well-cloaked as I'd thought. And who was I to enlighten him of the truth? It was an opportunity I was simply incapable of passing up. Even now I bet that the Elder has no idea that his most loyal vassal was following a set of orders he'd never issued. He was so busy chasing after you and Raziel that he never had time to catch my scent." There was no missing the immense satisfaction radiating from the entity.
"I did think it strange that Moebius would go to such lengths to arm his enemy so effectively," Kain confessed grudgingly, removing his sword to scrutinize the Balance Emblem carefully. He managed to keep from his expression how truly shocked he was. If what the Voice said was truth, what an awesome feat it must have been to deceive the nigh on omnipotent Time-Streamer. "I always assumed it was because he was trying to lure me into place for my eventual murder at Raziel's hands."
"That's what he thought, and those were his true orders. I could hardly contradict them overtly without arousing his suspicions," the Voice admitted pleasantly. "I only encouraged him to use slightly more creative means to do so. He had no intention of using that powerful vampiric artefact before I suggested it. Believe me; that took some very careful manipulation to accomplish. It is no mean feat attempting to out-slither a snake; especially when you find yourself unable to lie."
Kain chuckled darkly. "Indeed. I imagine that would be very difficult." He wasn't entirely sure if he believed what the Voice was telling him, but it certainly would explain a few things. There was an undeniable ironic appeal to the image of the master manipulator being out-foxed by a being apparently incapable of committing a falsehood. "And on that note, I propose we proceed with this insanity then. How is the Emblem to be used?"
"Over here," the Voice indicated, shooting through the air to hover near the base of the broken Dimension Pillar. "The symbol hides a panel beneath. The crest has to be turned out of the way." Again the blue glow radiated a halo around the object in question, a bronze disc coated with a thick layer of acid-green enamel and bearing the Ancient-Vampire symbol of dimension.
Kain hesitated only a moment before grasping the disc in his talons and wrenching it forcefully to the side. It lifted away to reveal a metal setting built into stained and cracked white marble. He didn't need any further instructions. He pressed the Balance Emblem back into place, clamped the metal clasps shut and took a few steps back. To his surprise, nothing happened.
"Did I do something incorrectly?" he asked the entity, "Or has the crumbling of the pillar thrown off the mechanics of the device?"
"No, it just hasn't been activated yet. I'll complete the preparations; you be ready to get to work," the Voice instructed decisively. There was a sharp blast of light and a cloud of fluorescent mist coalesced in the air above them. The glowing particles drifted to the ground where they gathered into vast geometrical shapes and patterns of symbols along the surface of the platform, somehow managing to weave their way under the mountains of debris. "Now Kain!" it ordered, "Press your palm to the middle of the Emblem and push!"
The vampire threw his weight behind his taloned hand and the device clicked securely into place with a rusty cry of protest. As he drew away reflexively, the Emblem began to rotate in its setting, whirling faster and faster until the eye could no longer follow it. The remains of the shattered pillar became ringed with loops and bands of green light, the webs of luminescence expanding to encompass all of the other pillars. As the light touched the central Balance Pillar, Kain was seized by a profound lethargy as he felt his energy slowly bleed away to feed the spell he'd set in motion. The blue markings the entity had set down shifted in colour from blue to aquamarine, and then to the same blindingly bright green as the energy web feeding itself into the Pillar of Dimension. A crack of thunder rang through the air and the glowing markings faded, their pale phosphorent shapes dissolving into the air like trailing steam.
"Nothing has happened," Kain said, looking about him curiously. "There is no portal, but unless I'm mistaken there's no resulting cataclysm either. I dare say you did not anticipate this turn of events, did you spirit?" He was feeling a little disappointed after that spectacular display of energy. The persistent ache in his stomach finally alerted him to the fact that the sensation of unnatural fullness had lifted and he was beginning to suffer from the pangs of blood-hunger again. It was an intense relief.
The Voice didn't deign to respond, merely drifting back several paces from the centre of the dais. That was all the warning Kain had before the second wave of deafening resonance struck, followed closely by a third and a forth until each rolling peal of thunder blended into another in a roaring chaotic symphony of terrifying proportions. Even the Voice, insubstantial as it was, pulled away and seemed to diminish a little under the sheer force of it.
The noise soon reached a point where Kain was able to pull his hands away from his sensitive ears and look around. He could tell it was still ringing out across the countryside because he could see the trembling leaves, the shaking dust on the ground, bits of rock falling loose from the surrounding cliffs, and droplets of water jumping across the surface of nearby puddles. While he could no long hear it, he could still feel the vibration penetrating through the soles of his feet and rattling his teeth in their sockets. The entity must have been able to hear even beyond what the vampire lord could, because it was continuing to cringe away from the Pillars. Then the world stilled and there was an awful silence.
"Is that-" Kain's hesitant sentence was cut off by a sharp explosion, like the sound of a sheet of glass being torn apart and the pieces falling to shatter on stone. It was so much louder than anything he'd ever heard before, even the shattering of the Pillars themselves. For the briefest of moments Kain feared that the world had ended, or that he had somehow managed to tear Nosgoth itself cleanly in half. He hadn't realized he'd closed his eyes again until he found himself slowly cracking them open to behold the damage he'd newly wrought upon the world.
Not six feet from where he stood was a large black circle cleaving a cookie-cutter shaped hole into the air at the centre of the dais. Around that mysterious gap shimmered a semi-transparent sphere of energy, forming a protective shield around it.
"It would appear we were successful. How fortuitous!" the Voice remarked happily, recovering well before the vampire. "It would seem the stock-piled energy reserves I gave to you up on the cliffs were sufficient, considering that our venture has succeeded and you survived the attempt. I am most relieved. I would not have had enough energy to make another effort."
"Energy reserves?" Kain glanced at the entity in consternation. "I don't seem to recall you imparting me anything, and something tells me I would have remembered something like that."
"I don't normally go out of my way to feed whatever hungry vampire crosses my path, the messiah apparent or otherwise." It circled the black hole leisurely. "Surely you aren't so arrogant as to believe you did this entirely on your own? Do you have any idea how many elite Vampire sorcerers it took to open one of these things in the first place? Without the resources of other guardians upon which to draw, I was forced to lend you a great deal of my own power."
"And you neglected to tell me this because…" he prompted irritably.
"Because you may have rejected my offer and in that case I might have been forced to retrieve what I had conferred upon you. That would have not been pleasant for either of us. I thought it best you made the decision without that knowledge in mind. It also prevented you from seizing upon the ridiculous notion that you could try to keep it from me."
Kain winced at that and let out a small hiss of disbelief. He had his own strengths and gifts; he certainly didn't need the dubious blessing the Voice's powers might provide him with.
"Do not be offended by my words Kain. I have taken enough risks already by revealing myself to you so openly and by utilizing so much of my energy. If the Elder were to come for me now I would be virtually helpless, with only my knowledge of the ether for defence. I would have preferred not to have gambled so much against such mounting odds, but this seemed to be the only way." The vampire did not miss the soft apprehension and muted hope in that last sentence. Perhaps it was wondering if it had made the right decision by trusting him
Kain allowed his proud head to nod wearily. He could sympathize with that. He'd made a very similar decision when he'd ordered Raziel cast into the Lake of the Dead. Even to this day he was still wondering if it had been the correct course of action to take. Shaking away the traces of dark memories that train of thought had begun to take him down, he turned his mind to the present by inspecting the portal he'd made with the Voice's precise help.
The closest thing he could liken it to was the portal that the Elder had crafted for him to attend his murder at Avernus. Except where the space had warped into a centre point in that case, this portal seemed to be an ever-expanding pin-prink of nothingness in the fabric of the universe.
"There is one thing I still do not understand spirit," Kain finally asked, coming back around the other side of the vortex to face the Voice as closely as he dared to. He was careful to keep his distance from both it and the glittering barrier. "How is it you not only knew how to open the portal, but what lay on the other side of it? Where did you gain this knowledge? I trust you with your own powers just about as much as you trust me with them."
"That's easy enough to deduce on your own little emperor," it responded with a sigh in its voice. "I was there when the Ancients built the Pillars in the first place. You know some immortal beings actually do something with their lives besides hedonistic indulgence and fulfilling delusions of their own greatly inflated self-worth. Do you truly believe that the Ancients didn't browse about a little before finding the 'perfect' place to seal the Hylden? They couldn't allow their enemies not to be punished and spare their suffering. It took several months at least of trial and error to discover just the right method to even open an inter-dimensional gateway of a sufficient size. It was around the fourth or fifth try that they stumbled upon a place that was a great interest to me, if only because it seemed to unnerve the false God so. As soon as it was opened he immediately ordered it shut and the calculations that had led to that place burned and forgotten. Well, of course that peaked my interest. Before the markings from the failed effort were wiped away I committed them to memory and sent as many scrying spells through the gap as I could before it was closed. Some of those spells are still active, giving me a limited view of what is taking place on the other side. I've been piecing the information together for a while now, and decided that this moment would be the best time to-"
The Voice's boastful monologue was interrupted by a loud cry from nearby. "Halt vampire!" and a blast of bright light sailed through the air in Kain's direction.
Kain simply avoided the blow by dissolving his body and allowing the wave of energy to pass by harmlessly. The female vampire hunter crept from behind the Pillar of Conflict, near to where the Voice sat hovering in mid-air. Either the human sorceress hadn't seen the entity, or she couldn't, because she stepped right in front of the spirit's luminous presence. Her fist clenched and she prepared to cast another spell at the vampire.
Stomach knotted in hunger, Kain prepared to strike first. "And I was so hoping for a last-minute snack." He allowed a pleased grin to touch his lips.
"We don't have time for this Kain," the Voice admonished him sternly. "I'll take care of the nuisance."
The human's shocked face whipped around towards the source of the mysterious words, and finally beheld the entity with a mixture of fear and awe. Before Kain could move to take advantage of this distraction, the Voice had already taken action. It's glowing presence wrapped around the human before she could resist. Her head flew back and it looked as if she was about to scream, but instead of sound a thin stream of ghostly energy trailed forth, looking much like the substance the Voice was composed of. The Voice drank in that energy and seemed to take strength from it as its natural glow increased slightly. Once there was no more energy pouring forth from the human, the spirit allowed the empty body to drop to the dais floor. The vampire hunter was clearly dead.
"I decided that my needs for sustenance were greater than yours vampire," the Voice said by way of explanation. "The Elder and his minions do not have the market completely cornered on the devouring of souls, as you and your son well know."
"How generous of you to think of my needs," came the sarcastic retort. Kain's hunger was sharpening his temper.
"I am thinking of your needs." There was no mistaking the offended pride. "I never do anything without purpose. Now watch. You may find what I'm about to do familiar." As it spoke the entity unravelled itself into a long tail, like a snake made of lightening and clouds. The phantasmal ribbon curled around the body of the human as it was lifted up into the air, arms dangling listlessly. Then the tip of the ribbon turned abruptly and plunged into the vampire hunter's still open mouth, burying its entire length into the hovering corpse. As the last of the spirit disappeared into the human's body, the shell was dropped to the ground again with a clatter of limbs and armour.
Kain took a cautious step towards it, but he wasn't surprised when the body suddenly sat up, gasping for air and heartbeat erratic. The Voice was correct again. It had been a long while since he'd last done it, but he had spirit walked inside somebody else's body before.
"I hate this." The Voice spoke awkwardly using the woman's throat, but still managed to convey that strange surreal quality of neutrality. "I've never been able to function a shell correctly. The pulse is the worst. I hate the sound of it, but I can never get it to beat evenly like it should be. Any vampire with a decent set of ears, and half of the predatory animal species can tell I'm not supposed to be in here. I'm most glad this is temporary." It was breathing heavily with the human's lungs and blinking repeatedly. He had expected a blue glow to radiate from the human's eyes, like Raziel's had done, but they still retained their dark brown tone. The Voice forced the body to climb a little unsteadily to its feet. It was completely obvious that whatever resided inside the body wasn't human in any way; the movement was all wrong.
"And how does this benefit me in any way?" Kain asked, watching the woman's body cautiously as it began to settle into something that vaguely resembled normalcy.
"And I thought I spent too much time alone," the Voice responded, its human face giving him an aggravated roll of the eyes. "While you're on the other side retrieving what we need, I will stay on this side and ensure that no one closes the portal on you. It will be impossible for you to reopen it from that side, and I am not strong enough to do it from this side for you. Being inside this shell will mask my presence from the Elder, so that should buy us some time before he realizes what we've done."
There was a cry of loud raucous voices and both immortal beings realized that a team of hunters were fast approaching on the trail of their missing comrade.
"Go Kain," the Voice encouraged, the human hand giving him a little push of encouragement in the portal's direction. "We've not much time to loose. I will make sure the hunter's do not follow you. Hurry." Whatever clumsiness the spirit had first experienced in the sorceress' body was fast leaving it.
"How will I find what I'm looking for on the other side? What can you tell me about that place?" Kain asked, making no moves towards the portal.
"What you seek will find you. That is the nature of the place. You will see a great many familiar faces, but remember that your quest is to retrieve yourself from that place. As for the city, for I believe that is where the other side of the portal emerges, it will greatly resemble Meridian, though a far more wholesome version of that. Do not cause trouble and be very careful when, where, and who you feed on. That is all I can tell you. Now go!" The small troupe of humans had come into view and having spotted the two figures standing by the pillars, was preparing to charge. The Voice threw open the woman's hand and the hunter's abandoned staff flew into it.
"Are you sure you will be able to do this?" Kain regarded the hunters coldly. He hesitated to go towards the gateway, uncharacteristically concerned, though he told himself he was just reluctant to entrust such a strange creature with his safety. The Voice reminded him of the Seer, one of the few beings in existence who had not attempted to manipulate him. Somehow he knew that the Voice was being completely forthright in its intentions, if only because the dishonest did not risk entrusting others with their secrets, and the Voice had practically laid its life in his hands. It must truly be desperate if it would attempt to curry the favour of someone with his reputation. A long-dormant human part of him held him back, just to be sure.
The Voice didn't respond. It raised one of its hands and a small rock levitated from the ground until it was level with its fist. Then the rock streaked away from the hand faster than the eye could see. The Voice's stolen mouth curved into a clumsy little smile as one of the leading hunters, a huge man with a giant hammer, crashed limply to the ground without a sound, one of his eyes pierced through. It raised the staff and a bolt of lightening streaked from the sky, incinerating two humans and injuring a third. The entity's smile became a little more malicious as the screams reached them. It opened its mouth and thin little streams of energy poured inside, feeding the monster hidden within.
"I'll take that as a yes then," Kain nodded his head in acknowledgement and stepped into the portal. It wasn't just a sense of displacement that seized him, but the feeling that he was being crushed and squeezed though a long, thin tunnel. Kain caught his breath as he was pulled along into the blackness of the void, the weight of the Reaver pressed reassuringly against his back.
(Even I'm not quite sure what the Voice is exactly, or rather was when it was alive. If anyone has got any suggestions it would be nice to hear them. Again, the more reviews I get, the more motivated I am to write the next chapter quickly.)