Chapter 19- "Successor."
It did not take Kain long to start a fire. Wooden debris from various limbs of stout timber used in his fortresses construction as well as its interior furnishings was scattered about all amongst the rubble. Once a sufficient supply had been gathered, Kain piled it up beside a large angle of masonry debris to serve as a windbreak. A simple flare of arcane energy ignited the pyre and soon it was a respectable crackling blaze, radiating a comfortable warmth against the mountainside chill.
Wearily Kain sank down against a rounded stone, resting the Reaver to one side and letting his stiff shoulders relax. He stared into the flames dimly, occasionally raising an arm to toss a bit more kindling in to keep it going. It felt good to stop and sit, even if only for a moment in this chaotic mess he found himself in. There was something so innocent and wholesome about sitting beside a campfire that it penetrated even his long calloused heart and made him nostalgic for a simpler existence. It was a foolish sensation but he allowed himself about ten minutes of indulgence.
There he was, Kain the rightful lord and master of Nosgoth, sat around a fire as if he hadn't a care in the world. Were he anyone else he might almost have been tempted to fall asleep while bathed in the fires warmth. But sitting there, allowing some of the tension to leave his body, contented him well enough. It was a welcome reprieve from the chaos, no matter how brief.
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"Very rarely in my long and varied career had I ever found myself at a loss. Whether the path before me was difficult or long I often knew what direction I had to travel. Now came one of those sparse moments where the road split and I hesitated, unsure of which branch I should tread."
-0-
But even as his body relaxed his mind whirled with questions and quandaries. The tense conversation with the Dragon was still vidily fresh in his mind. It had been an enlightening talk to be certain but the sheer peril he had been in throughout it, his survival dependent on Thanatos' talkative mood, had been less than enjoyable. If at any time his disposition had soured, the Dragon could probably have easily rendered him down to particles.
Even so, all the cosmic implications of the sheer enormity of the Equinox's potential troubled his thoughts considerably. The idea that there were more, perhaps countless more, entities like the Keeper and his enemy out there amongst the stars was bone chillingly terrifying. What made it all the more unsettling was the idea that this second Equinox could potentially birth many more to add to that cosmic multitude. Against the onslaught of such beings spawned by the meeting of existence and nothing, what chance did worlds such as Nosgoth truly stand?
Forcefully he tried to push all such morbid thoughts aside. He had not battled against Fate itself across the depths of time to succumb to an existential dread now. Firmly he locked the Equinox and its universal implications away in the depths of his mind and focused himself as sternly as he could on the immediate task which lay before him. He was up here, alone, far from any allies and completely clueless on where he should go next.
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"I was certain now that Ajatar and the Serioli had abandoned my Mountain fortress long before Thanatos destroyed it. What prompted her to do this I couldn't imagine but the action had proved fortuitous. They would not have fared well here against the Dragon, not even with such a fortified position. But where had they gone? Where would be safe from the wrath of the beast and his Divus masters?"
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Another flicker of light from nearby caught his attention and the Vampire frowned in distaste, reminded quite abruptly that he was not alone. He had a dutiful traveling companion.
"And just how long do you plan to sit here?" Moebius asked tartly. The spherical form his spirit had been forced to take hovered across the fire from him, his face highlighted brighter by the additional source of light.
"As long as it is necessary." The Vampire replied with some weariness, tossing another length of wood onto the fire. The flames crackled gratefully for fresh fuel. Moebius did not look at all impressed.
"Neither of us has the time to dally, Kain." He said with vehemence. Kain just shrugged one shoulder dismissively.
"My timetable is not dictated by you."
"For the first time perhaps!" Now THAT had him sitting up, his posture swiftly changing from a contemplative relaxed slouch to a rigid crouch. His lips pulled back over his teeth exposing his fangs in an angry snarl.
"Oh, you want to go there, do you Moebius?" The Vampire demanded scornfully. Moebius was not deterred and went on with angry vehemence.
"I was able to dictate your timetable so perfectly I could have versions of you from different time periods performing actions right on schedule. And not just you! I could delicately, with mathematical precision, organise the lives of people born years before and after my own native time!" He was almost shouting the words at Kain. "I was the Time Streamer! Guardian of the Pillar of time! The lives of people were little more than pieces on the board to me, no matter when in the timeline they lived! They were all mine to command!"
"Then why aren't you the one sitting here and me the one trapped as a floating head?" Kain demanded, snapping back at him, jabbing a talon at his enforced companion. The face of Moebius seemed to wince at that simple rebuke and Kain pressed on. "Face reality, Moebius! If you were really as in control as you professed you wouldn't be in your current situation! You were and still are just as much a puppet as any of your own pawns!"
Silence fell between them then, broken only by the crackling of the flames. They stared each other down across the fire, eyes locked, expressions set and the animosity between them seeming to spark in the air around them.
"I was there, you know." Kain finally startled in a low but intense voice, not turning his gaze away from Moebius.
"What?"
"The day your rebellion claimed the Citadel of your ancient masters. The day you killed the first Balance Guardian, Ba'al Zebur." Hearing that name, a name from a time so very long ago, caused the spectre to recoil with his expression becoming shocked for an unguarded moment before trying to regain its composure.
"I find that highly unlikely." He said unconvincingly. Kain held a talon to his chin.
"What did you say to him?" The Vampire mused. "Oh yes. You declared him guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to be food for you had him torn apart by the beasts you were using as instruments of war."
Moebius did not show shock this time but rather his expression seemed to tighten, the flames that made up his face becoming a darker colour.
"You used the Chronoplast to venture back." He supposed. Kain managed a sly smile at him, having now gained the upper hand in their little discourse.
"There was something I needed in that era." He openly admitted.
"And what was that?" Moebius was quick to ask. Kain did not reply but merely stared at him with a smug, superior smile of one who has a secret but isn't going to be telling it. Moebius snarled and looked away. "I do hope you're not expecting me to feel remorseful about what I did. I have no regrets."
"Oh heaven forbid!" Kain said to that, holding up both hands in mock surprise. His mocking tone caused the dark colour of Mobius' face to grow more vibrant as if the temperature of the flames that made up his form was increasing.
"I was leading an uprising to free my people from slavery!" He snapped, clearly losing his patience. "If you were there then you must have seen how it was for the Humans in those days. We were a slave race, forced to toil in mines, fields and quarries. Your ancestors built their cities, fortresses and strongholds off of millions of dead Human workers. Their mighty civilization rose from out of our sweat and blood!" His voice dripped with venom as he glared at Kain. "But of course, why should I expect you to emphasize? You took the species I freed and turned into a proud, independent race and reduced them back to slaves. No, I'm wrong. Not even slaves. Cattle!"
Kain sat there with a flat, unmoved and unimpressed look on his face.
"Oh please." He remarked in response with extreme distaste for Moebius' diatribe. "Your rebellion was no liberation of Mankind. It was a religious crusade. A crusade you spent the entire rest of your life waging. And how many Humans died in those purges along with Vampires, I wonder? Your own soldiers, innocent bystanders, those wrongly accused…" Then he raised a talon and pointed it accusingly at the spirit of the former Guardian. "Not to mention how your Lycan dogs came to be in the first place."
At this Moebius looked a little confused, brow furrowed and expression troubled. His form bobbing up and down.
"My dogs?" He repeated in a baffled tone of voice. "What are you talking about? They were just monstrous beasts supplied to me by the Divus for my uprising."
A long moment of silence endured between them broken only by the crackling of the fire and the howl of the high mountain wind. Kain stared at him with wide, incredulous eyes in utter disbelief. Finally his expression soured and he grunted, looking away to gaze out across the mountainside.
"No. No, I refuse to believe you didn't know." He spat, fully convinced this was a feigned ignorance.
"Know what? I grow tired of this evasiveness Kain." Moebius said, exasperated. Kain looked back at him, lips tight in anger.
"That you, the great Moebius, could be so...ignorant! You must have known! Or at the very least suspected!" The Vampire declared, but then paused, a sudden incredible thought coming to mind. "But you were young then...and not the kind to dwell on the conditions of a victory once achieved…"
"What nonsense are you blathering on about?"
After another moment of contemplative silence, Kain sat up and leaned forward, his expression and tone becoming more serious.
"You know of the Werewolves, do you not? Men that turn into beasts?" He asked. Moebius' expression, highlighted in flame, did not look any more enlightened. In fact he seemed all the more confused.
"Obviously some integral element of the creatures passed on to men after they were used in my campaign, yes I accept that. But I fail to see what…" And it was then that the penny dropped. The expression of the former Guardian expanded, sudden realization flooding into his eyes.
"How...they came to be…" He repeated and his voice was filled with a genuine shock. Kain raised a talon and pointed it at him, this time accusingly.
"You delivered men to the Divas. You never once questioned what they were used for. You simply did as you were told like a good little boy." The Vampire said emphatically, like the voice of a judge.
"It was a divine command. They were to be given a great honor in God's service." Even as Moebius said it, this religious inspired retort lacked the passion and fervor of his earlier commentary and his expression was still that of one who had just realized the full depth of their folly.
"And so they were. Either as slaves, or as monsters." Kain stared him down. "You truly did not know?" When Moebius did not respond he finally stood up to his full weight, looking down at the stunned orb on the far side of the fire. "Then you're even more pathetic than I thought you were! Moebius the time streamer, savior of man, the grand puppeteer of fate; all in the service of the One God. I'm no better and I won't pretend otherwise, but you liberated nothing. All you've ever done is force your beloved Humanity deeper and deeper into servitude."
Kain would have said more. In fact he fully intended to launch into a full rant about all of Moebius' various sins but before he could draw breath to begin, his senses began to tug at his awareness. His body, highly tuned over the millennia to become sensitive to his surroundings, told him that something was amiss.
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"A presence. Whoever it was were certainly doing their best to remain unobserved but I could feel the air shift, sense the thin tremor of pressure, along with the baleful sense of being watched."
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It was not the Dragon returning. There would have been no mistaking his sense of presence and sheer force of raw power. Whoever this was it was a far smaller, subtle pressure to his range of senses. Quickly Kain turned, scooped dirt over his fire extinguishing it in a single hiss of protesting flame before peeking out through a gap in the rubble of his makeshift shelter.
Before him the collapsed remains of his mountain retreat were laid out like the lumpy folds of a battlefield, everything quiet and still, the only movement coming from small clouds of masonry dust disturbed by the high winds. Kain could see nothing and yet something about the way the shadows laid across the expanse seemed wrong in places, as if there was a shadow for an object which did not exist and that shadow seemed to move imperceptibly through the debris.
Kain sniffed the air and the wing blew to him a strong tell tale scent. It was not a familiar scent, certainly not that of any individual he had ever met but it was unmistakably a Vampiric one. This however was no reassurance. He knew the scent of all the Clans of his Empire and that of Ajatar and her Seroli. This was an entirely unknown flavour of Vampire and the smell of it made him draw his lips back over his fangs in a grimace.
There were a number of ways to handle this situation and each had their merits. Logic suggested that it would be wise to be cautious and keep quiet, to see if he could observe more before taking direct action. Kain however chose not to heed logic. With a snort he shoved the debris to one side and climbed up atop the pile, making himself very visible. He stood there gazing out across the shadowed terrain with a stern expression forcing his face into a frown.
"I am in no mood for such games!" He announced in a voice that echoed off the side of the mountain. "Come out and face me directly, lest my patience be truly tried!"
His words hung ominously in the air and the following silent tension was palpable. Then a voice, a small unexpected voice, responded;
"Are you...Kain?" It asked and Kain was quick to detect the feminine tones. His ears were also quick enough to determine just where it was coming from, a position just to his left. He reacted instantly, turning in that direction with the Reaver held ready at his side.
"Oh someone who doesn't know my visage at once, what a novelty." He remarked dryly, drawing in the air. Now they were so close the smell was quite palpable and more the familiar. "I know you not, but your scent is unmistakable." His lips drew back over his fangs, nostrils distended. "Cabal."
There was a pause. Then suddenly a figure appeared. Or rather she seemed to melt out of the surrounding environment for her skin was covered in a set of spikes scales which had taken on aspects, textures and colours from the ground so that she appeared to be a part of it. She was small and slender, with rough cut short hair and sharp eyes locked onto him. Her natural colouring was a rough gold and she was lined with short spikes running along her shoulders and hips, with cloven hands and feet to show she was old enough to have evolved to take on that anatomical quality of the Ancient Vampires.
"So, isolated in your exile, it seems you of Vorador's siring evolved into something quite unique. Fascinating indeed. Perhaps I did your brood a favour by sending you all away after all." Kain remarked as he beheld her, smiling with high irony. She fixed her gaze upon him in response and seemed not at all intimidated by standing in the presence of the king of Vampires and the Emperor of Nosgoth.
"You cast us out to survive on rocks in the middle of the ocean. But we did, against all odds. Survive, adapt and overcome. We became strong in spite of you, not because of you." Her words were filled with a firm resolve that Kain found respecting despite himself. "I am Sally. I am Cabal. I am proud to call Vorador my sire."
Kain curled his lip into a smile
"As you should be. As any fledgling should be of their creator." He told her, placing the Reaver point down and resting her hands on the pommel, now amused by this new visitor. She did not seem to care for his amusement and visibly bristled.
"I am here to deliver an urgent message from my sire." She said then, getting to the point. Kain blinked and tilted his head.
"Ah, a courier. Excellent notion Vorador." He said to himself. Of course. If any long ranger type of telepathic communication might be overheard, then it only made sense to deploy another method. Using his descendants, with their stealth inclined adaptations, as couriers negated that threat. Such a method would suffer from a time lag but that could not be helped.
Sally turned and pointed, directing one talon toward the south. "He bids you go to his castle erected in exile, for those who need your help await you there." She said with an odd formalness, delivering her message.
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"Yes of course, the far flung distant islands upon which once stood a Hylden City and to where long ago I had banished Vorador and his brood. Far away from the Divus' precious Ark, it would not be a priority for the Divus who so far were concerned mostly with ensuring their vessel remained as secure as possible. It would not remain immune from attack forever but it was, for the moment, one of Nosgoth's better sanctuaries."
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Exactly how long such a remote fortress would be overlooked by the Divus was another question but frankly, any haven was a boon right now.
"I thank you for delivering this message. I shall go speak with Vorador now." He said, inclining his head in a mock politeness for the delivery of the message. Sally looked him in the face without rising to the jibing.
"My sire has gone to make contact with the Humans who are hiding elsewhere." She informed him. "Others will meet you there who can tell you more. Now I must go. I have others to contact." She did not wait for any dismissal or acknowledgement, her body taking on the surrounding hues and colours and within moments she was invisible again, a merely flickering outline in the shadows. "Farewell, your imperial majesty." Were her parting words before she seemed to melt away and Kain lost sight of her entirely, the smell of her Vampiric scent swiftly retreating.
"Impudent little thing…" He remarked to himself, even as he let his form disperse and he erupted into a cloud of bats.
Even for bats, animals gifted with flight and enhanced by magical swiftness, the journey south across Nosgoth and then out over the coast took some time. The harsh blowing winds which swirled over the ocean waters did not aid in his journey either and the cold gnawed at the wings of each bat. But Kain did not relent, driving on and on until finally the dark spires of the isles rose into being on the horizon. With one final burst of effort Kain soured on until he drove his scattered form all the way up to the jagged shoreline and there, at the water's edge he finally permitted his tired sore bats to recombine into his proper shape.
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"It had been many centuries, millenia, since I had last come to this place. The Hylden general, in his guise as the Sarafan Lord, was attempting to open a gate to the demon dimension in this ruined city. From there he planned to lead forth the Hylden as a conquering army to subjugate all of Nosgoth, creating a new timeline where his species was dominant. The parallels to my own early desires were less than pleasing but also undeniable. But unlike him I held no grand delusion that I was in any way justified in performing the acts of brutality I did. Unlike him, I knew I had to do better."
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The long tiring journey he had forced himself to take through the bats had left his energies taxed and for a few moments Kain leaned against a rock, out of breath and with a slight momentary vertigo. The hunger gnawed at him and he felt his mouth ache for replenishing blood. He would need to feed soon.
Shaking off the weakness with a determined grunt, he looked up at the blocks of ancient stone which formed the Hylden city and above that, to the towering cliff which loomed over it. Atop that cliff, constructed from recycled stone from the city below, was a castle - a keep constructed by Vorador to be his home in exile. Even from the beach Kain could indeed see that lights were flickering in its distant windows. There was indeed someone home.
"Kain." The voice at his side, a reminder of his less than welcome travelling companion was a sudden disruption of his train of thought.
"I'm busy right now, Moebius. Go whine to someone else." The Vampire replied tartly, staring to make way towards the first stone blocks before him, the outlines of the old city.
"Perhaps I may, you're about to have company." That got Kain's immediate attention and he paused in mid stride, turning sharply to gaze back at the small orb of light behind him.
"What?" He demanded, frowning. Moebius' fire outlined face was turned, gazing out at the water.
"Something is coming." The spectre of the Time Guardian informed him.
Kain turned to follow his gaze, half expecting to see nothing. But sure enough there were dark shapes in the water, dozens…no, hundreds of them. Swiftly they moved, sliding out from the deep towards the shallows moving together in near perfect synchronisation like a school of fish.
Kain turned to face the oncoming horde, holding the Reaver at his side, watching as the shapes broke the water to reveal glistening bodies with grey skin with rising hoods either side of wide shaped heads. Many of them were marked with dark decorative designs outlined in recognisable Vampire symbols, even at a distance. As soon as they came close enough for these details to be clearly seen Kain knew them at once
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"Rahabim, the children and clan of my fourth son Rahab. Adapting to overcome the inherited Vampiric weakness to water, they had become fierce predators of the waves. Rahab himself had long since fallen, killed by Raziel during his quest for revenge. Since then his clan had wandered across Nosgoth's dark waterways in search of fresh meat."
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In a surge they emerged from the water, striding up onto the beach together still moving in unison as if they were a protective school. Exactly how many of them there were was hard to say when they all kept together, perhaps about three hundred if Kain was any judge. Many of them were adults, larger than the fledglings around them with curving webbed talons and wide heads with a slit mouth filled with sharp teeth from which issued a low chorus of wet grunts and gurgles. Their clan's line of evolution had removed much of the Humanity they had once had and only the vague arthropodal outline for their shape remained, the rest showing adaptations of amphibians, reptiles, fish and other water based animal life. Their bodies were covered in debris from the waters, seaweed falling from them as they moved to leave a stinking trail up the beach.
"Children of Rahab! Step forth and recognise me!" Kain declared, holding up the Reaver above his head in one hand. Instantly the horde stopped and turned, all heads locking onto him at once. Their gurgling went silent in a moment and all eyes were upon him, unblinking and glassy. As they remained still Kain caught sight of their condition. They were thin, malnourished, many of them with unhealed injuries to show they had no reserves of energy with which to repair such damage. Fledglings hung close to adults of their siring, like actual children.
"You are Kain." A sloping wet voice finally broke the silence. The horde parted and from their ranks rose a Rahabim specimen far larger than all the others. Evidently he was the eldest amongst them for his body showed signs of evolution which seemed to be taking after their ultimate sire. He was broad shouldered with an immense finned spine running down his back between the two smaller cobra folds either side of his head.
He still had legs but an immense, long, thick tail had sprouted from the base of his spine and trailed in the sand of the beach; thickly scaled like that of a crocodile with the spinned fin running unbroken down its upper side. The mouth was huge, large enough to swallow an entire Human without needing to chew and lined with curving shark like teeth set behind thick white lips. His skin was still grey but green markings had begun to creep in around the edges, a telltale sign of his eventual evolution to match the form Rahab himself had taken long before him.
"You are the Emperor who abandoned us, abandoned all the clans, to fall one by one into barbarity and slow degeneration. Allowed the Empire to collapse into dust!" This large aquatic Vampire moved on up to him, tail dragging through the sand in a bend posture as he was far more top heavy when out of the water. He loomed over Kain, staring down and in those dark eyes all reverence and respect were gone. "You are the God who turned his back on his people! Yes, we know you."
Silence fell following that angry denunciation, broken only by the lapping of the waves upon the shore and the occasion nervous croak from what Kain saw now were a band of refugees fleeing the mainland searching for better feeding grounds and an escape from extermination by the Divus armies.
"What is your name?" He asked finally, gazing up at the large Rahabim before him. The creature flared the webbed fin on his back in response.
"I am Dagon, one of the last of Lord Rahab's direct siring." He announced in a proud and even challenging tone. Kain raised the Reaver and directed its point toward his chest
"I hear bitterness in your tone, Dagon." He said. "Do you resent my absence so much that you are prepared to ignore my dominion? Are you challenging my authority?"
Silence fell again as Dagon turned his head down slightly to behold the Reaver blade pointed at him. Every Vampire of the Empire knew exactly what sword this was and what it could do. It was a fabled, feared weapon that no sane Vampire would willingly put himself before.
"Are you exerting your authority? Do you have need of us?" Dagon asked finally, looking up. The resentment and bitterness still filled his voice.
"I have need of any who can fight at this time." Kain stated. The large Rahabim moved back slightly, out of the swinging reach of the deadly blade.
"The Melchahim are exterminated. The Razielim are long extinct. The Zephonim have vanished. The Dumahim are scattered nomads. The Turelim struggle in the harsh north." What you see here is all that remains of Lord Rahab's clan."
Kain thought to himself that to have so many of the clan still alive was actually quite impressive. The others were in terrible shape if not outright expunged with only the Turelim hanging on due to an alliance with the Forsaken Humans. For the Rahabim to survive in such numbers with no one to rely upon but themselves was a feat worthy of respect.
"Your once great empire is all but dead. If I am to surrender to your authority I must know that you will not abandon us again. That if we defend you, you will defend us." Dagon finally got to the point and Kain could see that beyond his own resentment, beyond his own anger, his only concern was for the well being of his clan - to the legacy of his sire.
"I suppose my simple word would not be good enough?" The Emperor of Nosgoth asked with a tilt of the head.
"No, it would not." Dagon replied, defiant to being commanded so easily. "So…choose your next words carefully."