Yay, finally in Nosgoth, everyone! Please Enjoy!

I do not own Legacy of Kain, The Breed, or any of the characters mentioned in this Fan Fiction save for Katrina, Auron, and Nikolai (And a few folks added later).

Also, " " is speaking verbally. ~ ~ is speaking mentally/Whisper when it comes up.

Edits were done by my dear Beta Ellara Levellan as of 04/13/2017. she pointed out the lack of Nikolai's description x.x

Further Edits are done as of 7/2021 as I go through all my works to fix grammar and spelling issues. Using a new tool to help out

Chapter Five: First Slaughter

I woke up slowly to a foul stench in the air. It was a mix of rotted food, piss, and vomit that wouldn't have been out of place in the darker allies of the Vegas Casino Strip. I was also soaking wet, and the scent of petrichor was strong in the air. For a moment, I thought I'd dreamed everything. Hoped that it was a dream. Every bit of agony, every torment, every broken bone, and bloodied lip... but as I shifted, that hope shattered into a thousand pieces. Pain flared along my left side. My wing had been pinned at a rather painful angle beneath my body.

I pushed myself up, wincing as my fingers scraped not against concrete but mud-covered, rough-cut cobblestone that you might find in an older city. I wanted to cry. In relief. In anger.

It had been real.

"Well... at least I got away," I muttered to myself with a weak laugh. "Always look at the bright side, right...?"

The wing was not broken, that much I could easily tell as I slowly pushed myself up into a seated position. There was no sharp pain originating from the limb to assault my senses. That kind of outright agony was a feeling that I was very familiar with by now. Still, the limb was unresponsive to my movements beyond a few weak twitches, which was concerning.

As I poked and prodded at the wing, I relaxed. It had merely fallen asleep under the weight of my own body. The slow tingle of renewed blood flow started to make the wing twitch and itch the more I tried to move it. A small shiver ran through me. I was soaked through and cold to boot. For a moment, I couldn't quite tell why I was drenched down to the skin, my feathers heavy with moisture. I glanced around and then up... and suddenly had to blink rapidly to clear water from my eyes.

It was raining. Gently. I must have been laying on the ground for a while to end up so drenched. But, oddly enough, I welcomed its' soothing chill. The soft splashes of water hitting my skin. The rain drumming a steady rhythm against the cobblestone. It was wonderful.

I wasn't trapped inside anymore. I was free.

I wasn't sure how long I stayed there on the ground, but I knew I had to move. There was a very real possibility that I was being looked for. I got to my feet slowly and looked myself over with a critical eye. Other than the stiff, tingling wing that was rapidly regaining full movement, flame-blackened feathers, and my being covered in a mixture of my own blood and the muck that was on the ground that was rapidly being washed away by the steady rain, muck of which I assumed was mud since there was no harsh scent of shit, I was in good shape. Yay.

Looking around to get my bearings, I realized I was nowhere near Auron's castle of horrors. In fact, there was no cliff nearby for me to have fallen from. Instead, I was in the outer slums of some sort of city, near the edge of a copse of trees in a... a park of some sort? Strange. All of it, the nearby buildings, the signs hanging from them, the park itself... seemed vaguely familiar to me. Even the peculiar green glow coming from somewhere nearby looked vaguely familiar. That same glow cast a bit of light on the streets to break the pitch blackness of the moonless night.

A low mist covered the ground both in front of and behind me. I stretched my wings a bit as I looked around, confused. Once the one wing stopped twitching, I drew them both around my body like a kind of feathered cloak or cape. Thankfully, the odd bone structure of the wings allowing for the largest bend of each wing to rest neatly upon my shoulders. I moved down and out of the small alleyway I was in and took the left path. Even with it being so dark, I could see that going straight or to the right would only lead me to a pair of dead ends.

Superior vision for the win.

Still, I kept to the shadows as I neared what looked to be the main streets of this... town? City? I found myself wondering if this was some new and strange game of Auron's. Shouting caught my attention, and I froze in the shadows. A young man was shouting and yelling drunkenly at three other men. All three of which were in armor. There was no one else present in the immediate area to take note of the growing argument. Which was also odd. I was used to crowds gathering around such outbursts, phones out, and recording. Usually, someone would be egging the fight on. Or calling for people to stop.

The armor was... eccentric. Stylized. And again, familiar. The thought of where I could be and why this place would seem familiar tickled at the back of my mind like a half-remembered dream from weekends spent at home gaming. Which didn't make sense. I eased closer, trying to better look at the armor without revealing my presence.

The armor looked like steel but had a bright, silvery-blue sheen to it that wasn't normal. Blue cloth hung from certain areas. At the back, crotch, and hips. Each strip of cloth had an odd symbol on it. The symbol was of a sword pointed downwards in front of a yellow circle, with Egyptian-like wings extending from behind the hilt. Beams of light shot upwards from the wings. I clearly remembered they would glow when a certain kind of creature came too close. If... if vampires came to close.

The memory clicked into place. Those three men were... Sarafan?

How?!

I stood there for a few moments, thoughts running wild. How was this be possible? Sarafan, or at least these kinds of Sarafan, did not exist in my world. I glanced around once more, holding my hand out to catch the rain.

This felt real. Was I somehow, someway, no longer in my own world? In my own Realm? Perhaps I was no longer on Earth or at least the Earth, Terra, Gaia that I knew? That, or I was having one hell of a hallucination brought on by injury, or I had finally descended into complete madness to escape my tormentor. How was this possible? How...?

I blinked a few times, still staring at my hand, and then dropped my hand with a shrug. Did any of that really matter now? If this was indeed a hallucination or a dream brought on by my state of mind, then well... what the hell? Why not enjoy it while it lasts, right? It's not like my dreams had ever hurt me.

It was the waking world that I felt pain in. The waking world that could cause me harm. Dreams had always been a source of solace and a kind of ephemeral freedom. Even if it never lasted, it was still a kind of freedom that I had learned to welcome with open arms. Of course, if something actually hurt me, then I'd be careful going forward. But until then, I decided to simply live in the moment and enjoy this... this seeming fever dream.

But... what if it wasn't a dream...? What if...

No.

Stop. Breathe. Think.

I let my eyes drift shut and tried to remember what happened when I went flying out of the window. I had been spinning as I fell. There were the flames. There was... a cyclone of fire or maybe light? Perhaps, during the time of my fall and the time I hit the ground, I might have passed through some kind of a vortex or portal. If I was right, this was the capital city of Nosgoth.

What was it called again? Meri... Marri-something?

Meridian. That was it.

I hummed softly to myself. My memory still seemed fine, at the least. I certainly was not about to complain about the situation because, dream or madness, I wouldn't have to deal with Auron directly any longer. Either I was out of his hands for good, or I was too mad to care any longer.

But I had a new set of worries, and my thoughts would not stop spinning around in a circle. Was I dreaming? If not, how would I get home? Could I even go home? Did I want to go home? And lastly, how in the world I had ended up in Nosgoth of all places? Had Kain been fiddling with the powers of the Pillar of Dimension? Was my landing here was the result of someone's meddling?

Wouldn't really put it past him, I thought to myself with a small bit of dry amusement. He's a curious and controlling ass. Or he's supposed to be.

The shouting grew louder. I turned my attention back to the group. The boy, young man maybe, was gesturing rudely at the knights. His hand was resting upon the hilt of a short sword at his waist like he was ready to draw the weapon at a moment's notice. From the look on his face, as well as the slurring of his words, my earlier assessment was correct. He was definitely drunk as a skunk.

At a glance, he looked to be about sixteen years old. Maybe seventeen. But it was hard to tell for sure. He might well have been younger than that, given that life on Nosgoth was equivalent to Gaia's Dark Ages. That meant that a human's lifespan would roughly thirty to thirty-five years. Maybe. If you were lucky, at least back in the Dark Ages, you might hit forty to forty-five, but that was rare. He stood at about five and a half or so feet tall and seemed a bit gangly. Young enough to have not yet hit his last growth spurt. Which was another reason he might be around his mid-teens. He had long brown hair pulled back into a tangled and knotted tail. Even given the dimness of the street lamps, I could tell that his eyes were a brown so dark as to be almost black.

He was well built for one so young. Definitely a person who spent a lot of time fighting, though. I moved a few feet closer to the group. I wanted to hear what they were saying yet remain far enough away that they wouldn't be able to see me in the shadows. Oddly enough, the runes on their armor didn't react to my presence. Strange. I was fairly sure that Kain or another vampire would have set them off by now. Right?

The conversation grew louder as the tallest of the three Sarafan spoke out for the first time. His tone was cool. Condescending.

"Get inside, citizen!" the male said. "The Vampires are on the prowl this late at night. If you value your life-"

"Shut up, ya piece of trash!" the kid shouted, cutting the Knight off. "Vile, snobbish murderers! Without a true leader even! Just a brat sittin' in his high chair babblin' away! Worthless, the entire lot o' ya! I would rather meet with a Vampire than remain in the presence of your filth!"

The youngest of the three Sarafan started to move toward the boy, hand straying to the hilt of his own sword. The third member, and by far the bulkiest of the three, held out his hand to stop the youngster as the taller one spoke once more.

"Hold your tongue, boy," he growled out, "before we are forced to teach you respect!

The man's voice was cold and cruel and, well, yes, snobbish. He was acting like a high and mighty noble when it was highly likely that the man had been no more than a peasant himself before joining the ranks of the Sarafan. Honestly, dream or not, the man filled the role of two-bit nameless side villain well enough.

"You are drunk," he continued with a sneer, "so we are going-"

"Respect? Respect!?" the boy cried out before scoffing and spitting off to the side. Ew. "What do you bastard whore-son's know about respect!? My family was ruined by your bloody lot just because you wanted them out of the way. You took our rightful, ancestral property away from us without just cause. Without a trial! Your lot accused my family of being in league with Vampires! We did no such thing, and even when we showed you the truth, blatant proof of our innocence, you still destroyed our home and our very lively-hood! An' that's not counting what else you lot have done to the other nobles of the city!"

It seemed that the boy's anger had grown too much for him to control in his drunken stupor. He drew his sword and attacked the guards. He slashed the blade in a quick horizontal cut and, for a move that was extremely accurate for a drunkard, caught the youngest guard in the throat. The blade gouged a deep wound, and blood began spurting and flowing in massive, pulsing rivulets that beat in time with the guard's heartbeat. An arterial wound.

The younger Sarafan knight fell to the ground, choking and drowning in his own blood. The blood-scent was like a siren's call, but I held still despite my Hunger. I knew how to control the need for blood, even half-starved as I was. Should I get involved or leave...? Dream or not, I wasn't about to support the Sarafan.

The second Knight drew his sword with a shout for aid and moved forward, bringing his own blade down for a blow meant to hit the young man's left shoulder. The kid brought the blade of his sword up hard enough in a counterblow that caused the guard to lose his grip on the weapon. It also gouged a deep mark in the kid's blade. I winced. Even I knew better than to use a sword like that.

The Sarafan's blade went flying into the air and clattered to the ground near my feet. I bent down and picked up the blade, hefting it and testing its weight even as I backed further into the shadows. I looked down at the blade and blinked in astonishment. How odd. The blade hadn't been damaged by the young man's disarming move the way the kid's blade had been.

Strange. I knew that swords were made for striking, for stabbing, not blocking. It seemed as if this blade at least was made differently from the swords of Earth. Perhaps it was more resilient to the shock of impact thanks to magic? Or maybe it was made from a different material altogether? I looked back up and saw that several more Sarafan were moving in on the confrontation. They'd come from further down the wide street to join the fight, having obviously heard the commotion. At this point, the boy was drastically outnumbered.

The call of blood in the air was very strong, and, oddly enough, I felt the urge to fight fill me. I hadn't felt this urge for a long time. Oh, I'd fought back against Auron's minions out of spite, yes, but this? The urge to kill? To hunt? It was all but overpowering.

I licked my suddenly dry lips and shifted the sword in my grasp to clasp it in a loose yet firm grip. I moved quickly and silently toward the boy's side. I slashed upwards in a move half-remembered from the times I'd practice with my own blades. Never having received any formal kind of training, I had relied instead on YouTube videos to get an idea of the basics. It had been nothing more than an idle hobby.

To my surprise, I managed to cleave off the head of the guard that had been about to impale the kid from behind. My superior strength even helped put a certain oomph behind my blow that made up for my lack of skill. Thanks to my stealthy approach and lack of reaction from their runed armor, the man had no chance to realize what had happened until it was too late.

Surprise, I thought to myself, grim satisfaction filling me.

The boy turned toward me with a start, hefting his blade as if to strike at me, but he hesitated. From the look on his face, he must have thought me to be just another of the Sarafan... Until he saw my half-raised wings, that is.

As if I would help them, not that he knew that. I knew they'd kill me the moment they realized what I was. Not only that, but I had never much liked the Sarafan depicted in the games anyway. Uber-religious group hell-bent on wiping out an entire species? A species that, if the story was right, started with the Ancients who had done their level best to control their new Hunger? Not only that but some of those hinted at atrocities committed by the Sarafan would have been considered blatant crimes against humanity.

Dream or not, I wouldn't help people who tortured if not raped a group of people just for being different. I might not even help the vampires if I found out they were of a similar mindset. I shook my head to clear it and grabbed the boy by his free arm, yanking him to the side to pull him out of the way of an incoming blow. I then gave the boy a shove toward an alleyway, which earned me a dirty look from him.

"Just get out of here, kid!" I hissed at him, eyeing the wary group of soldiers moving to surround us.

Pushing him toward the alley had sadly left me open. I suddenly felt a sharp pain in the right side of my body. I looked down, startled, and saw the tip of a sword protruding from the lower-left area of my chest. A moment later and it was yanked from my body. A faint hiss of pain escaped my throat. Alright, alright... Fuck, shit and damnation, but the pain meant that all of this was far more likely to be real and not a hallucination. But... no.

Work it out later when you're not currently surrounded by hostile forces, woman! I thought angrily.

The boy moved as if to help. I let out an angry, pain-filled hiss and bared my fangs at him in warning. The boy froze at the sight of the sharp ivory points of my fangs. I spread my wings out to their full length and knocked at least three of the Sarafan to the ground, giving myself some precious room to fight. I spun around and caught the throat of the guard that had wounded me. My claws extended and dug into the man's throat. His hands scrabbled at my wrist, but I hardly noticed.

An enraged, hungry sneer curled my lips as he gurgled as if trying to speak. Or scream. I yanked my hand backward, kicking him in the chest as I did so. The action tore out the man's throat to the point where the bone of his spine was glistening in the light of the moon and stars. A small part of me, a part that lingered despite the years of torture, felt horrified by the action. The rest of me was...

Satisfied.

The boy fled, either out of terror or the knowledge that I could probably survive on my own. Honestly, I didn't care why, just that he had left to find somewhere safe. Somewhere away from me. The blood lust was building. It was stronger than it had ever been before. I hungered for blood and battle and death. For once, I was able to fight back.

With the boy gone, I was left to deal with about six or seven of the Sarafan. It was hard to count with the Hunger tearing at my mind like a wild thing. Many of them were shouting at me, but I couldn't focus. Not on their words, at any rate. I had gone without feeding for so long now, and I was also wounded. It was getting hard to breathe past the need growing within me. Harder still to focus beyond something that had broken free in my mind. Something angry and irrevocably free to act.

I... found myself beginning to lose myself to the blood lust, and, if I was honest with myself, I welcomed the sudden rush of strength coursing through my system. My instincts had heightened to a level I had only known before when I'd been bound and chained and unable to act. Previously, I had been incapable of lashing out. Unable to strike back. Unable take my vengeance and feed upon my attackers as I had wished to, had longed to, for I no longer knew how long.

Now there was nothing to hold me back. Nothing to contain my rage and Hunger. I was free, and this... dream...? gave me the chance to cut loose.

I spun about and lashed out wildly, managing to strike a sword from the hand of another guard with the force of the blow. He was left weaponless and panicked. The desire to feed briefly prevented out all other coherent thoughts. And yet, I was jerked to a stop by a fresh wave of pain. My mind was pulled back from the cliff's edge. I turned to look at the new wound.

One of the guards behind me had caught his blade in the bone of my left wing. A ragged scream escaped my lips at the feeling of such familiar agony. Suddenly, I didn't care if this was all a dream. The only thing that mattered was the rage at taking yet another injury to my wings. How dare he. How dare he attack me so. How fucking dare he?!

"You... you!" I let out a snarl that ended in a vicious hiss.

I twisted about, closing my wing in a way that trapped the blade. The movement wrenched the weapon from his hands. It hurt. Nothing would stop that kind of movement from hurting, but I had long ago learned how to power my way through the pain. Crouching and pulling my wings as close as I could manage, I spun full circle with my 'borrowed' sword to lash out at the legs of those around me.

The move worked surprisingly well. Enchanted or not, the strength behind my attack was enough to cut through the greaves of one guard and into the ankles of another. Still spinning, I stood, lifting the blade with me in an upwards spiral. Those closest to me had their heads cleaved from their bodies. As their heads bounced off the ground, I noticed that at least two were stumbling away, grasping desperately at their throats.

Once, I might have felt remorse for killing someone. Once, I might have frozen at the thought of fighting for my life. Now, I didn't much care. Not if someone has proven themselves a threat.

Instinct drove me forward. I ripped the now-ownerless blade from my wing and threw it as if it were a throwing blade. The sword flew true and pierced through the armor of one of the remaining warriors. I blinked in surprise, not expecting the blade to cut through the armor like butter. Reason dictated that it was because of the difference in strength between us. Reason had also taken a backseat to blood lust.

I wanted to feed. Needed to feed. But I was growing weaker.

My sight had gone dim. Or rather, it had tunneled. And yet, I could sense the humans around me far easier than before. I could practically taste where they were upon my tongue. Could all but predict what they might do next by the movements in the air. I spun and lashed out with the sword, the cut-off scream ringing through my ears like a siren. The feel of my claws rending through the armor like it was paper-mache was intense. Blood coated my tongue in a wash of heavenly relief.

I'm not sure how or when, but suddenly I had one of their hearts in my hands. I blinked at it, noting with a kind of numb satisfaction that it was still beating. Rather than drink from it, I crushed it and let the ruined organ fall to the ground.

My vision slowly cleared. I looked around, taking in the ruined remains of the Sarafan around me. Surprisingly little blood was splattered on the ground. Oh, there were wide arcs of blood splatter here and there, but... I felt full. I'd fed and fed well. And yet... I hurt. Pain pulsed through me like a drum-beat. My hand shook as it rose to my wing on its own. I blinked at the slickness and looked to the side.

Oh. The main vein had been cut by the sword. And it was having trouble healing over. Because I'd been so active? No. That made no sense. The wound should have closed over some time ago regardless of how active I'd been in that fight. Frowning, I looked myself over and detachedly noticed that my other injuries were also healing at a slower rate.

As I stumbled my way toward the alleys, I glanced at the sword in my hand. Perhaps there was some sort of magic in the blade. Something that hindered a vampire's ability to heal. I paused to lean against the wall of the alley entrance as a wave of dizziness hit me. As I waited for the nausea to fade, I looked over the blade. Runes lined the length of the metal. Runes that might very well obstruct healing as I'd thought.

Shaking my head to clear it, I started deeper into the alley. I needed to get out of sight. Needed to find someplace safe to hide. If I stayed out in the streets, they'd find me and either kill or capture me. Most likely the former.

Another wave of dizziness hit me, and the sword slipped from my fingers as I stumbled. I caught myself against the wall, claws scratching lines into the stone. I tried to take another step, and the world spun around me. I fell backward, wings beating weakly in an effort to try to catch my balance. It didn't help.

I had enough willpower left to give a mental tug at my wings to draw them back within my form. A rush of feathers filled the air as I did so. The impact against the ground was muted by shock, and I found myself blinking at the slowly clearing sky. Unfamiliar stars greeted me. As my feathers filled the air, my mind drifted. The view was... pretty.

Hopefully, if I was found by Sarafan, the lack of wings, human-slow healing injuries, lack of water injuries, and a heartbeat would all make them think I was an unlucky bystander caught in the middle of a fight. At least, with my wings tucked away, I wouldn't suffer any further major blood loss. My eyes slid shut. Maybe it would be okay to rest for a few.

No. No, it was too risky. I needed to move.

It was a struggle to even move my hand. Still, I forced myself to my side, trying to push myself to my feet. My hand slipped against the slick cobblestone, and I fell back to the ground with a groan. I forced my heavy eyes back open and blinked blearily at the area around me as I rolled onto my back. I didn't even have the strength to startle at the blurry form of a male moving to stand over me.

The man had what looked to be long, silver-white hair, the length of which flowed out from a raised hood and dark red cloak that he was wearing to protect him from the recent rain. I couldn't see much of his face, hidden as it was by the shadows, but I could still make out a cold smirk. Strangely enough, he seemed familiar to me. My eyes fluttered shut. I couldn't... couldn't focus. Couldn't stay awake.

My last thoughts before slipping into unconsciousness were a confused jumble of curiosity more than fear.

Who was this man? And why was he so familiar?

Please Review! Reviews are the life-blood of Authors!