Once and Future King

Legacy of Kain: Once and Future King

(A continuation fan-fiction for Legacy of Kain: Defiance)

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/../- implies vampiric ‘whisper’ a.k.a. telepathy/mental projection.

The Soul Reaver isn’t capable of speech as such, but I gave it dialog anyway to show that Kain can interpret its wordless snark without difficulty? I have no idea. Just go with it.

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The End: Chapter 7-

Kain stood his ground as the youth swung the Soul Reaver experimentally against the dank air. The afterimage of its flaming aura followed the blade’s arc like a ghostly fan. He’d felt the Reaver’s bite before now, as a wraith blade. His sword and Raziel’s spectral version had tangled at Avernus Cathedral when Raziel had sought his heart for the sake of Janos Audron. He wasn’t thrilled by the idea of throwing himself under the blade’s edge again, even knowing he had to. Holding his hands away from his body, he reminded the vampire-he-used-to-be that he was unarmed.

“Allow me but a moment of your attention, child, and I would tell you of your future.”

“I know my future, Kain. Do not imagine you can educate me further on the subject.” The blond vampire dismissed his offer with a jerk of his chin, eyes narrowing as he raised his sword to the ready once more. “Stop delaying the inevitable and die already. Die so that the world might live.”

“Only promise me that you will covet the Soul Reaver in my place. To be its master is to give it the respect it deserves.” Kain addressed the first and foremost amongst his concerns. He could feel Raziel shifting at his side, the knight solidly determined to stand with him; ready despite the impossibility of mustering any worthwhile defense against the soul stealing blade. Reaching out without looking, he caught the vampire’s arm, holding him back from anything foolish. Focused entirely on the dazzling blade in the darkness and its wielder, Kain tried to persuade the youth onto a different course. “The weapon is your birth-right. It is also your only means of salvation. You must keep it from those that would seek to diminish its power.”

“The blade is cursed, sentient or not. I have no doubt of its power, but calling it my salvation? Surely you jest.” The young vampire laughed cynically. “Other than using it to butcher you, I have no need of it to ensure either my own, or the world’s salvation. You forget. I heard you declare this blade was marked as your doom! Did you think I would not make the connection? If it is your doom, it is more than likely mine as well.”

The fledgling examined the flame wreathed sword in his hand, un-swayed by its cruel beauty. “Do you think I shall happily carry it around for the next thousand years so that it may turn me into a wrinkled old troll like you? Or so that any fool has only to pick it up when my back is turned and slay me with it? I think not.” The blonde vampire stepped forwards, gathering himself for the task he was about to do. “I shall take very good care of it, never fear. But I shall never let it be used against me.”

“Would you kindly stop making the mistake that the world revolves around you, Kain?” Kain shifted even as his adversary did, circling to his right to delay their final conflict. If the boy was inclined to debate with him, there was still chance of garnering his interest in the greater scheme of things. In theory, he had nothing to fear from the fledgling’s efforts. While no mean swordsman, the youth had proven already to be no particular challenge. Kain was faster, stronger, more cunning than any vampire alive, he knew. But did any of that count against the Soul Reaver’s magic? Or the stubbornness of a closed mind?

“Your eventual death is entirely superficial compared to the Reaver’s true purpose.” He spoke bluntly, hoping to shock the fledgling into greater curiosity regarding his destiny. “It is imperative that you keep it with you, always. Without it, your so-called-oracle will keep you chained with lies and enslaved by illusions for the rest of your unnatural life!”

They circled around the edges of the platform, ignoring tremors, water, and debris from the earlier battle. Kain eyed the youth across from him warily, reading his initiative from the set of his jaw, the tension in his arms. Undoubtedly the fledgling was doing as much for him as well. He was vaguely amused to see that the youth paid Raziel no mind, even as the younger Kain passed in front of the knight to continue his slow chase. The winged vampire was treated like just so much statuary, utterly dismissed in the vampire’s absolute focus on larger prey.

Raziel blinked and stepped out of the way, raising an inquisitive eyebrow at Kain from over the youth’s shoulders. How easy it would be, he realized, for the knight to simply knock the idiot down and pin him. For a moment he was tempted to let the vampire try it, Raziel certainly seemed willing enough to give it a go. The risk was simply too great however. If for some unknown reason, the man failed, the logical repercussion would be his youthful-self skewering Raziel on the Reaver’s tip. That was an event Kain was earnestly trying to avoid. Sending the vampire away entirely would have been ideal, but he doubted the knight would listen.

Kain shook his head in negation, not wanting his lieutenant to provoke the boy to anything violent. He concentrated instead on his words, trying to explain to the young fool the magnitude of his mistake.

“The blade you hold in your hands was forged by the vampires of old in response to a threat not even they fully comprehended.” He gestured at the broken murals all around them, wishing the false-god hadn’t done quite such a thorough job of smashing them to pieces. They had told of the vampire’s champion, sword in hand, perhaps it would have swayed the youth slightly to know his blade was more accurately foretold than he himself? Certainly he was neither winged, nor horned, nor blue, but he was still Scion. The Soul Reaver had, and would always be, the same. His alternate-self raised an eyebrow at his declaration, not entirely as disinterested as he claimed to be.

Kain forged ahead, wondering if he was getting through at all. “They created it as a tool to be used against the ultimate evil of their world, the true enemy of Nosgoth as yet unrevealed. It is a weapon forged from star-metal, enchantment, and the willingly-given soul of one of the best and most resolute of their tribe. They spared no effort, ensuring that the world’s champion could be armed as none other in history ever had been. Has it ever occurred to you, Kain? That the Scion of Balance exists for no other reason than to see that the Soul Reaver is delivered to its final battle?”

“The battle is over, you old fool!” The fledgling gestured at the ruined shrine all around them in turn, utterly failing to see the point. As if on cue, the walls shuddered with a gentle tremor along with the earth itself. The unseen land beyond their little catacomb was still tearing itself apart, slowly but surely. “The world is on the brink now and you talk of future calamity? Open your eyes!”

“It is not my eyes that are blind!” Kain snarled back. “Such superficial damage as has been inflicted these past few days can be repaired! There are deeper issues at stake. Your ‘oracle’ seeks nothing but an endless repetition of the war and misery that has plagued Nosgoth since the beginning of recorded history! And you are playing right into its hands with your dreams of selfish conquest. Has it even mentioned the Hylden to you? What befell them? Their anticipated return?”

The youth blinked at him, confused, eyebrows drawing together artistically as he considered the question. “I know of no Hylden. What madness are you speaking of now?”

“God save me from your ignorance.” Kain spat, furious with himself. This was not how he had planned their tête-à-tête at all. Perhaps a mutual enemy would provide the necessary impetus for the youth to collaborate with him a while longer. There was precious little else in the ruined shrine to distract the boy from his self-declared quest. “Make no mistake, child. The Hylden are coming. Their hatred of all things vampiric is only shadowed by their hatred of this so-called-oracle the vampires once worshiped. They will not hesitate to throw everything they have at you, in this dimension and all others under their control. Once they kill you and claim the Soul Reaver, they will pervert the future to their own ends. The world will become little more than a playground for demons of every foul shape and size imaginable.”

“I’ll just have to make sure I don’t lose then, shan’t I.” The blond vampire drawled, kicking some debris off the edge of the platform with a scuff of his boot. The room shuddered yet again, further filth dusting down from the cracked ceiling to coat the boy’s armor, and the rest of them in a dusty film. Kain resisted the urge to sneeze, knowing how little it would take to provoke the young vampire into an attack. The youth shook his head, casting his mane of pale hair over his shoulder. “Thank you for the warning, Kain, but I probably would have figured it out on my own. Any other redundant bits of advice you want to inflict on me before I kill you?”

“This one.” Kain gestured obliquely at Raziel, still standing in the shadows. “He must be returned to his proper time.” His youthful self followed his hint and seemed surprised to see the knight still there. From prize-to-be-claimed to afterthought, Kain shook his head on the templar’s behalf, how quickly the impatient fledgling dismissed anything, or anyone, that didn’t prove immediately useful! More the fool him. Raziel at least seemed neither surprised nor offended. The winged vampire watched them both with narrowed eyes, lips pressed into a thin line as he bided his time, awaiting orders.

At his pronouncement however, the knight’s expression twisted into an expressive grimace. Raziel glared at him from across the dimly lit platform. “You still insist on this insanity? Do I have no say at all?”

“None.” Kain snapped at his suddenly stubborn ally.

“Don’t be stupid.” The fledgling agreed, sweeping his sword to the side in a regal gesture. “You are exactly as the fiend names you, a paradox, and a fool as well. You’d side with him even as he fulfills his prophesized role and brings about the end of the world?” The youth rolled his eyes as Raziel sputtered chided from both sides. Kain felt a momentary regret for snapping at his earnest companion but was caught by his alter ego’s stare when he opened his mouth to counter the declaration. The armor-clad nobleman raised the Reaver, pointing at him with the blade’s tip. “Is Moebius’ little contraption at the heart of the Saraphan Sanctuary still intact? If not ‘tis no matter, the Oracle has the ability to pull objects through time and space.”

“Humor me, and use the time streaming chamber.” Kain grimly replied. “You know something of its workings already, but you’ll find the machine primed and ready for the necessary trip.” The sanctuary was far enough south that the storms ought to have given the old fortress a miss as they’d carved up the highlands. Even if the place was a wreck, the time streaming device was at the lowest level of the structure and more than able to weather a little rain and wind. It was far better to embark on another round of digging through slush, than to blithely ask Raziel’s former tormentor to escort a new version of him through the twisting passageways of time. Allowing the Elder God to play host on a journey back to the future stuck him as a terribly bad idea. Knowing the monster’s sense of humor, there was no telling where or when the knight would end up.

“Well well, you seem to have thought of everything.” The vampire’s false cheer was positively grating. Kain resisted the urge to belt the child in the face for his insolence one last time.

“If your patience would allow it, I should like to see him departed in safety before doing you the favor of dying?” Kain didn’t give his request very high odds, even as he asked. True to form, the vampire across from him smiled cynically, looking more fox-faced than ever with the bitter expression.

“You should have included that in your preliminary negotiations, old one. You were the one who set the terms so cheaply. You have no one to blame but yourself. He should be honored really.” The pale haired vampire raised a gauntlet to solicit that Raziel step to the side and await his turn. “He will be able to witness my first formal act as Balance Guardian before I send him home.”

“Your first failure, you mean.” Raziel murmured angrily, claws clenching reflexively around the hilt of his own weapon. “You’re no better than the one I left behind, blade or not.”

“Bite your tongue, bird-man.” The fledgling hissed, his false-gentility of minutes before completely forgotten. “It’s bad enough that I have this supposed-future Kain to harass me, but an upstart winged freak too unimportant to be named in the prophesy seeks to school me as well? I think not.” The youth left off stalking his chosen prey in favor of a target more appealing. His armor clattered authoritatively as he stalked across the dusty platform to stare Raziel in the eye.

The knight stood as if rooted even with the Reaver close enough to cut him. Young Kain sneered as his lack of reaction, “What do you know of me? Nothing. What are you to me? Nothing. I could pluck you bare with a word. I could cut you down at the same time as your wrinkled master here with barely a flicker more effort. History will forget you, Raziel. I will forget you. You would cease to exist forever, here and now.” The youth snapped his fingers to emphasize his point. “And no one would ever know, or care, save your monstrous master over there. Do not seek to test my mercy, vampire. Others have done so to their peril.”

Raziel matched the youth’s look with one of autocratic distain. Seeming to forget the dim and dusty tomb, the rags he wore, and his own cringing past, the vampire stood unmoved by the threat. Tall, proud, and grimfaced, he suddenly seemed larger than life, magnificent, powerful, as if it was he who was destined to be emperor, not the boy. “And yet I say you are nothing. You speak of being remembered by history, but don’t care what it is they will say of you? Kain the sycophant. Kain the butcher. Kain the easily beguiled. Is that what you want to be remembered for, Balance Guardian? You are strong, but have no interest in exerting your powers to their intended purpose. You have cunning, but willfully cling to your own ignorance.”

Drawing himself up taller still, Raziel left the younger vampire standing slack jawed, delivering his verbal assault with a voice that had once – and still could – inspired armies. Even from the perspective of audience to the uncanny verbal flaying, Kain had to cringe at the accurate, if not at all friendly portrayal of his life. Much of what the vampire said was not entirely off-mark for his own history. That he had managed a little better in his own distant past, than the Kain that his Raziel remembered, counted for something. But he didn’t delude himself that he had ever been a paragon of virtue. “The world looks to you for guidance, Kain. Raziel continued after a gut-wrenching pause, “Leadership, sacrifice, nobility of spirit. And what will you give? Your meat is selfish distain and disinterestedness. Your drink is casual sadism. You will revel in pomp and praise, and banners on city walls, never looking to the suffering beyond the surface. You demand your right to sup from golden cups, but you will never deign to work to earn it. ‘All Hail Kain’ by all means! Never you mind the weeping of the widows and orphans you leave in your wake.”

“You- You - Do not talk to me of earning! I have done all! I have sacrificed! My humanity! My pride! I have toiled under the yoke of this prophecy thrust upon me when by all rights I should be dead, peacefully resting in my crypt. You dare call me lax?” The fledgling bared his teeth, pushed to the limit of his temper. “I have done exactly as I was meant to do! All save one thing! And that, I would not give! I will not give! My life is my own!” The Reaver flared with Kain’s unbridled fury.

“Raziel.” Kain barked at the knight, trying to remind him of their purpose. “Now is not the time!” The vampire had as much of a knack for riling the child’s temper as ever his Raziel had done to provoke his own over the years. It didn’t bode well. Swords drawn and words flying hot and free between the pair, it was only a matter of time before someone’s control gave way. Seeing that neither was paying him any attention, he closed the distance between them anticipating that if the youth didn’t make the first move, Raziel undoubtedly would. Fighting between them had already wasted precious time.

“You are a pretender. A conceited child playing at being a hero.” Raziel stared the younger vampire down, ignoring Kain’s council. His aura radiated disgust, but his voice was resonant, giving his insults an almost poetic feel. “If not for the soul sword? You’d be just another arrogant ankle-biter. You are wholly ignorant of your place in the world, your purpose, your very origins! You’re unworthy of even polishing the armor of a creature like him.” The templar’s smile was barbed as he gestured at Kain’s approach, clearly enjoying being able to sink the better part of a millennium’s worth of frustration and bitterness into the ready target presented.

Kain reached the knight in time to grab Raziel’s arms before the vampire could do something as stupid as strike at the youth. Raziel hissed at him in distracted fury, shouting his final declaration at Kain’s alter ego before he was brought to heel. Kain dragged him back several feet, determined to smack his head into the wall to shut him up if he didn’t hold his tongue. “I’m surprised it doesn’t renounce you outright! Alive as it seems to be, it must recognize you as I do! As a petty, vain-glorious fool who has no more interest in saving Nosgoth than his own hide! You’re a squire who loves the tourney, but fears the fight.”

“That’s enough, Raziel.” Kain was forced to let go or do the vampire harm as the knight flipped his wings forcefully and fanned them slightly as if prepared to fly. Or fight, Kain realized. He had seen how hard the muscled appendages had knocked the Hylden back. The armored youth would weigh considerably more then those sorry corpses had, but undoubtedly it would still be a distracting attack. He stepped out of the way of one of the smoky grey wings as it threatened to do as much for him, and got a firm hold of Raziel’s neck before he could slip away completely. “Do not confuse what might-be with what has not yet occurred.”

“Believe me, lord Scion, I’m not.” The vampire did not take his eyes off the pale fledgling across from him. The youth’s unnaturally pale skin was flushed pink with rage. Raziel’s own features were near bloodless with the same strong emotion, eyes baleful as they reflected the Reaver’s fire back at its master.

“You call him Scion?!” Young Kain hissed, incredulous. “I am Balance. Not he. I possess the Soul Reaver-”

“Not for long. You’re too scared to even hold it properly.” Raziel bared his teeth, finger-claws fighting Kain’s hold even as he was pulled further from his prey. “I wager even a child could take it from you.”

“Your pet’s tongue is going to get him into trouble someday, Kain.” The fledgling announced grimly, lifting the Reaver blade into an over arm attack stance, holding the sword level with the ground as he seethed. “Perhaps I’ll cut it out. And save you worrying about him.”

“That would be unwise, Kain.” Kain counseled, squeezing Raziel’s throat tighter to prevent the vampire either twisting out of his grasp, or saying anything else liable to start a war. The knight proved surprisingly hard to hang on to however. Provoked and obstinate, he struggled and fought against the restraint, wanting to finish his fight.

Like oil thrown onto a fire, the pair’s tempers fed off each other. He could well remember the phenomena. Studying it from an outsider’s perspective, he marveled how anyone at court had ever had any doubts of their intimacy. The pair of them snapping and snarling until finally there were only two ways it could have gone. Either Kain would knock his infuriating lieutenant to the ground and spare him, or kill him. At first Raziel had been too useful and beautiful to kill, later, it slowly formalized into something of a game between them. Raziel, knowing he could never truly win against his sire, became a hawk tamed to the hand. Never anything close to sedate, he was content with testing the limits of his lord’s resolve without driving him to murder, and himself? Well, he’d taken considerable pleasure in finding new ways of exacting compensation for the headaches his favorite inspired.

The dynamic was entirely different now, however. Several hundred years older, and stronger than the fledgling, the Raziel of the here-and-now seemed more than willing to test himself against the potential threat of the Reaver in order to make his point to Kain. Without the sword, Kain really didn’t give the youth a chance of defeating the knight. If the two were to fight, a death would be almost unavoidable. He couldn’t let it happen. The sword had somehow remained oblivious to the knight’s presence for the better part of three days. He didn’t dare think what would happen if it came in conflict with the vampire, even for an instant.

Raziel wrenched free from his distracted fingers, smiling wickedly. Dancing out of Kain’s reach he raising his weapon in challenge, calling once more to the fledgling stalking him. “I am not afraid of you, infant. I’ve seen what you will become. And if my choice is to go back to that future, or make my stand here, I choose to stand! You want Kain? Try and take him from me!”

“As you wish.” The youth swept forward with a snarl, letting the Soul Reaver’s fire guide him forward. He and his blade both thirsted for blood.

Seeing that his foolish ally was actually willing to meet the challenge head-on, Kain silently apologized to both Raziels for the awkwardness of the situation before lunging forward to knock the vampire off his feet. It was child’s play, once the knight was pushed off balance, for Kain to grab hold of his shoulder and belt. Kain swung the vampire around and out of the way of his alter-ego’s attack, releasing him at the apex of his swing to tumble across the floor of the platform.

The knight yelped in pain as he landed on a wing and rolled to a stop against the base of a Pillar, picking up a generous layer of filth in the process. Kain could not respond to the vampire’s thwarted cursing however, he was too busy dodging his younger self’s irate counter-attack. Too angry to be elegant, the fledgling swung wildly with his now ravenous soul sword. The brilliant aura of the blade was near blinding as it swept past the end of Kain’s nose, his reflexes pulling himself out of the path of the sword by the barest margin as the blade wailed and cleaved the air. Somehow the Reaver sounded more menacing when in the child’s hands than in his own; a difference of perspective perhaps? He did not care for the sensation of being prey.

Somehow he dodged several of the sweeping attacks, ducking and mist shifting to clear the radius of immediate danger and put a safe distance between them. He marveled at his luck as he wiped the dirt from his gauntlets, eying the youth warily. Either the fledgling was too innocent, or too angry to realize that he could lean on the Reaver’s more magical powers to slow or pin an enemy in place. Kain wondered that the sword didn’t volunteer its assistance as it had with his battle with Audron, but couldn’t honestly complain that it didn’t. Had Raziel’s soul truly wanted to crush him, he doubted he would be able to muster much of a defense. The memory of his failure at Avernus was still fresh at hand. Certainly he had been reluctant to strike the final blow, but Raziel had undoubtedly had magical skill and strength to match his own. They had been devilishly evenly matched. There was also the fact that it had chewed easily through Janos’ defenses, Hylden-possessed or not. Kain was confident the sword had the capacity to stop him, so either the sword didn’t truly wish to fight him, or it didn’t know with whom it fought?

Lunging forwards, Kain grappled with his fledgling. Capturing the youth’s wrists in his own fists, he forced the boy’s arms, and so his sword to the side. Thwarted but not yet disarmed, the fledgling threw his shoulder against Kain’s chest, hoping to break free.

“You bastard.” The younger vampire hissed at him in annoyance. “I thought you wanted to die!”

“You were going to kill him!” Kain snarled, annoyed all over again that he had to point out the obvious. Hot headed as the vampire was, had he already forgotten what he had agreed to? “I told you, he has to go back to the future!”

“Dead now, or later, what does it matter!”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Kain replied grimly, countering the vampire’s struggles for freedom. “Promise me.” He barked, not above pulverizing the youth’s wrists if that was what it took to sway him from his murderous ambition. “Promise me you’ll see him safely to his era!”

“You’re a fool!” The youth bared his teeth.

“Promise me!” Kain repeated.

Too close to safely let go, given his opponent’s increasingly foul temper, he hung on and tried to think of some plan. His claws bit easily through the gaps in the steel gauntlets, but the fledgling did little more than flinch, seeming to gain in strength and stamina with each passing minute. Kain couldn’t fathom how the man was resisting him, and then the white glow running along the armored arm fed him an unwelcome clue. Raziel. The boy was not yet savvy enough to utilize the blade’s magic, but the sword had initiative enough to keep the vampire from harm. It was healing and supporting the youth even as it had done for him over the past several days. The fledgling was functionally invincible so long as he held onto the damned blade.

Kain swore and renewed his efforts to subdue the nobleman. His fingers grew warm with the tickle of the Soul Reaver’s fire, his former lieutenant’s consciousness tracing along his current master’s arm and so over to his own. Feeling the distant burst of startled recognition from the sword, Kain acted instinctively, head butting his younger-self sharply and leaping backwards out of range. His own forehead, evolved and armored with thick bone ridges over the years, ought to have been more than a match for the more human-styled wielder of the Reaver blade. However he found his battery once again insufficient. The Soul Reaver’s master would not be taken down so easily. Instead of staggering backwards in confusion and pain, the boy flailed forwards, wildly striking at him with his now-free sword arm.

One hand clamped to his face, the vampire had to be half stunned by the sudden blow to the head, but that did not stop him. Kain felt the sting of the Reaver’s edge biting into his shoulder even as he tried to mist out of the way of the strike. His minor enchantment refused to take, drawn into the blade’s core even as the sword pinned him, bones and joints frozen by the enchanted aura.

“Swear to me, this farce is over. And I’ll make that promise.” The fledgling’s breath was ragged as he lowered the hand pressed to his forehead. A rapidly fading bruise on his temple was the only external evidence that their brawling had affected him at all.

Kain opened his mouth to accept the offer, but his answer was silenced by the cold burn of Raziel’s fire as the blade’s energy poured through him. For an eerie moment he was positive that he had lost, that he would be consumed. His every muscle felt as though it was alight, his eyes dazzled by the magical brand in front of him. He blinked, and wondered that he still could. Instead of carving a deadly furrow through his chest, the blade seemed content to hold fast at just a scratch. The weapon rested feather-light against his shoulder as he half-knelt against the Pillar’s subterranean platform, caught between falling and dodging the strike.

Looking past the Reaver’s incandescent edge, he caught sight of his fledgling’s contorted face. The boy looked to be straining with all his might against the immovable mass of the sword’s hilt. The blade, it seemed, was stuck. Kain resisted the urge to laugh out loud at the fledgling’s useless efforts. It was a scenario that he himself had experienced only days before. Until the Soul Reaver’s cooperation could be won, the young vampire might strain to move it for the rest of time and get absolutely nowhere.

“Kain.” He tried to get the youth’s attention, feeling he ought to explain to the baffled vampire what was happening. Young Kain seemed able to put two-and-two together without his assistance however.

Snarling, the fledgling glared at his blade. “What is the meaning of this?! Do as I say, you hunk of useless pig-iron! You belong to me now, not him!”

Kain shook his head in disbelief that it had come to this. The Reaver, the weapon that until now he had feared as much as he had cherished, was defending him, even from itself. Raziel’s perverse loyalty to him remained, despite all the odds.

He closed his eyes, marveling at the absurdity of life, even as he appreciated the compliment paid him by his silent ally. They had come a long way together, each following his own path as they sometimes ran parallel, and sometimes intersected down through the long centuries. Always meeting and parting, and meeting again… Until this moment?

It was strange to think this was the end.

/ Where is your rage now, child? / He asked the blade wonderingly, feeling the tingle of Raziel’s awareness along his skin.

Irony-of-ironies, that he had worked so hard to talk his lieutenant out of killing him at Avernus, and failed. And now he was obliged to try and argue the opposite, with equally poor results. He projected his thoughts to the stubborn sword pressed against his shoulder, knowing it could hear him. / Strike!/

/ Is this not what you sought for so long? Is this not what you are owed? Kill me and save Nosgoth! Kill me and take your revenge! / Kain felt the blade shiver in response, but still it did not budge. The scratch it had begun along his shoulder itched slightly as the astral flames ghosted over his skin.

What if you’re wrong?

The sword buzzed angrily, causing its new wielder to grimace in pain as he clung to the hilt. Kain snorted softly, amazed that even now Raziel could be so contrary. The one time he needed his lieutenant to be vindictive and head-strong, the man was inclined to stubbornly rationalize? The world was truly tilted on its ear.

/ Remember your wings, Raziel! / He goaded the sword. The bitter tang of his former lieutenant’s fury echoed back at him immediately, proving he had struck a nerve.

/ Kill me! / He encouraged the wraith. / Do you suppose I wept for you as I ordered you into the abyss?! We do what we must. This is no time for remorse. The damned monster beneath us is laughing with every moment we delay! /

Kain… there will be no turning back!

/ Set me free, Raziel. / Kain reached up to grab the side of the blade beneath the hilt, adding his efforts to the youngster’s feeble attempt to push the sword into his chest. White flames burned against his arms, alternately scalding hot and freezing cold but doing no damage.

Dropping the last of his mental barriers, he allowed the spirit’s consciousness to entwine with his, unfettered, trying to convince it of his resolve. / I’m tired, child. Too old and bitter to do justice to the titles bestowed upon me. It is too late. Better to stand aside for a fresh champion to take up the burden, don’t you agree? I leave the young one in your keeping. I don’t envy you the task of molding him into a hero, but I know you’ll manage somehow. You always do. /

If this is truly your wish. I will not refuse you.

/ It is. / He sighed in relief, feeling the blade’s resolve firming at last. / For Nosgoth. /

For Nosgoth. Kain could have sworn that he heard Raziel’s tired voice agreeing with him in the mental caress. A trick of his own exhausted brain perhaps. He would make the sacrifice required. It was what he owed, to the man, to the world. Searching his own consciousness for any hint of dismay or protest, he was surprised to find there was none. For once even his most cynical aspects were silent. A Kain would fall, and yet Kain would live. Looking up, he caught the fledgling’s eye, distracting the boy from his frustration.

“The king is dead.” He smirked, accepting his fate. “Long live the king.”

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The Soul Reaver’s cry turned despairing as it relinquished its hold on the fledgling’s arm. Still puzzling out the meaning of Kain’s final declaration, his younger self staggered as his desperate pulls resulted in an immediate and unexpected movement of the blade. Comprehension dawned in the handsome vampire’s face as he caught himself with python grace, shifting his stance to come about again. The boy shouted in triumph as he hauled the sword back to strike again, this time certain of his victory.

“Vae Victus!”

Compelling himself to relax into the inevitable blow, Kain closed his eyes, not particularly interested in seeing the Reaver work its magic on his tired corpse. Blind to the room around him, he did not notice the shadow diving between himself and the writhing blade of light swinging down from above. He did notice the heavy collision against his shoulder. Kain was knocked sideways, almost head-over-heels along the platform by the violence of the shove. Blinking up at the shadowy ceiling of the cavern he acknowledged the reality of the sharp gravel digging into his arm and back and realized his plan had been utterly derailed. “What in the hell?”

Pushing himself off the floor, Kain swore sharply and with feeling. In his sudden fit of martyrdom he’d stupidly forgotten about the other Raziel. The thrice damned templar had intercepted the downward stroke with his own battered weapon, parrying the blade to the side, his face a mask of intense concentration as he faced off against the fledgling Balance Guardian. A second hit from the Reaver sheared Raziel’s sword completely in two, the soul stealing blade more than a match for conventional steel. Casting the broken weapon aside, his foundling-Raziel grappled barehanded with the young vampire he fought, much as he had done moments before.

If Kain had had a heart, it would have stopped cold at the sight. This was it. The moment he had been trying to avoid from the very instant he had brought the templar back in time to this world. Two Soul Reavers were again in conflict, and he had no idea what the consequence would be this time. If the blade fed on the alternate future’s Raziel, would that mean that two souls would inhabit it? Or would any soul belonging to Raziel be weighted as Raziel’s soul when the accounting was done; the infinite composite accepting yet another incoming sliver.

There was no explosion to herald the catastrophe. No shriek of astral pain or sense of cosmic foreboding. Raziel deftly deflected the fledgling vampire’s elbow, when the nobleman tried to break his nose, and still wrestling with the youth, twisted out of the way of the blade’s sharp edge as it swung at his head and wings. Shifting his grip down the vampire’s arms and onto the hilt of the boy’s sword as it passed within reach, he managed the feat of pulling the blade from young Kain’s grasp as if the chore was commonplace. Raziel redirected the sword’s momentum in his favor as soon as control was his. Wielding the pommel as a club, he dealt an ugly blow to the boy’s head with the backswing.

The fledgling fell to the ground with a cry of dismay, Raziel standing over him with a look of satisfaction. Automatically conditioned from years of warfare to claim the captured weapon as his own, he brought the sword into a two handed stance as he awaited the vampire’s next move. The twisted contour of the Soul Reaver wavered in the air as the blade responded to its new bearer’s aura, but its light did not extinguish. It did not shatter.

Kain had gotten no further than upright as the rapid takedown had occurred. Sucking a startled breath past his teeth, he stared at the tableau, wondering what it all meant. No blood had been drawn. The sword had not directly impacted his lieutenant in any way. Without the actual collision, would it still count as a cataclysm? Or had fate just dealt him a card from the bottom of the deck? He had no plan for such an eventuality, and was inclined to expect the worst. But nothing happened. The world remained, exactly as it had been a moment before.

The Reaver while still bathed in showy spangles and astral flames, remained just a sword. Raziel while panting from his recent exertion was otherwise unruffled.

Breath was stolen from Kain’s lungs as soon as he dared relax. He felt almost relieved as the cosmos proved his paranoia well justified. Spectral fire raced up his new lieutenant’s unwary arm as if fanned by a gale, engulfing the vampire from head to foot before he could do more than flinch. The Soul Reaver’s song swelled into an incredulous roar as the sword recognized its new host. The sound grew louder and louder until the cry itself was an assault, compelling Kain’s fledgling-self to scrabble across the stone floor to gain precious distance, driving Kain back to his knees.

“Raziel!” He winced against the light and cacophony, forcing himself forward against the opposing forces in an instinctive attempt to separate the pair of them before the vampire was consumed. This time, the Reaver seemed prepared for his interference. Kain felt his fingers repelled by an invisible barrier even as he came within grabbing-distance, claws scraping uselessly against thin air and translucent flames mere inches from his goal. He fought against it a moment before what he was seeing truly sunk in.

The fire wasn’t destroying Raziel. It was protecting him? The Soul Reaver’s aura burned along his lieutenant’s skin and ruffled his rags and feathers without harm. The templar stood at the center of an incandescent maelstrom of half-manifested reality, eyes closed as if lost in a dream. The intensity of the energies the Reaver was emitting increased, along with the volume of its outraged cry, driving Kain backwards again, away from the vampire with a wall of sound, wind, and invisible force. Wincing and shielding his eyes against the impossible brightness, Kain had to tilt his face away, eyes streaming as they tried to adapt to the suddenly hostile environment.

Sword and lieutenant both were little more than a glow of white at the heart of a column of compressed energy. Grit was flung in all directions as a cyclone’s worth of air spun in the confined chamber, casting debris and water up against the walls of the room as it sought to escape. The roof of the cavern buckled and exploded outwards as the magical pressure reached its peak, pushing in all directions. Kain wondered if his eardrums would survive the explosion unscathed as the world concussed around him. A slew of falling shale and splashing impacts filled the room as the wind whistled and shrieked, growing momentarily stronger still as it found its way upwards to freedom. Large chunks of the above-ground shrine crashed downwards as the pressure abruptly faded, fracturing and cracking the stone shelf they stood on and threatening to send the entire shrine plunging to the bottom of the lake. Moats of light gathered and swirled in the air, closing the gaps where the fractured columns from the bottom platform ought to have joined with the remaining stumps on the above-ground shrine, hinting at where the broken Pillars should have stood uninterrupted.

Half deafened by the cacophony of crashes and wailing winds, Kain blinked against the sudden silence, realizing he was crouching like a fool waiting for the sky to fall. Glancing across the still blinding radiance of Raziel’s aura, he could just make out his alter ego’s terrified expression. The boy had been blown backwards a short distance, but was still very much alive. Having no serious claws of his own yet, the fledgling had sensibly clung to the base of a Pillar for the worst of the blow, eyes still squeezed tightly-closed against the painful windborne debris and light. Content that his past-future hadn’t been inadvertently cut short, Kain concentrated on his primary worry.

“Raziel?” He called out to the corona of light at the center of the Pillar’s shrine, unable to tell whether he shouting or not due to the ringing in his ears.

The energy, and noise, abated with each passing moment, the storm of magic spending itself and evaporating into the heavens until it was imperceptible from the weak sunlight now bathing the platform. Looking around the room, Kain saw, as well as felt, the characteristic blur of temporal distortion. Reality was visibly vibrating, the walls seeming to flex in response to the rapid beating of some cosmic heart. He blinked as his stomach protested the disorienting sight.

Just like in William-the-Just’s chapel. The meeting of two Reavers had proven too much for the continuum to bear. The phenomena itself wasn’t dangerous, but it heralded a critical turning point to come. Looking back at the source of their time-rift, he found everything very much as it had been before. Raziel was standing calmly with the Reaver in hand, seemingly unaffected by the power he had inadvertently released. The vampire’s wings ruffled with the ozone laden breeze, fanning outwards as if preparing for flight, but at least he was no longer wreathed in astral flames.

“Raziel.” Kain spoke the knight’s name again, voice sounding tired and strained in his battered ears. He found himself entirely ignored.

The vampire was staring at one of his three fingered hands as if it was an unspeakable marvel. His other remained wrapped firmly around the hilt of the Soul Reaver, almost entirely encased in the witch-fire that still crackled along the length of the blade and up his arm. Taking an audible breath, Raziel reached up and rubbed his face, bemusedly feeling along his jaw and neck. Combing his fingers through his hair, the dusty filth that came away also seemed to also be a source of amusement. The vampire leaned back, fanning his wings wide and stretching them up and over his head, pinions spread in a dappled array of smoky grey. Raziel stared upwards at the massive feathery appendages rising above his shoulders for a long moment, seeming entranced by the very idea of them.

Softly at first, and then with increasing energy, Raziel began to laugh.

His sudden outburst of bitter laughter broke the shocked silence of the room. The shrine was ruined, and reality dangled by a thread, yet Raziel chuckled heartily, arms wrapped around himself to support his ribs as he almost doubled over in cynical mirth. Something in their predicament had tickled the vampire’s sense of the absurd, and it took several minutes for the knight to regain some semblances of control over his reaction. Raziel shook his head as his amusement abated. Stretching his wings a second time with a small smile, he seemed to be enjoying some private joke. Kain took a breath and stood, baffled by the reaction and intending to confront his lieutenant, but froze as the vampire turned abruptly and pinned him with a stare.

The knight’s wings folded against his spine with silent grace, massive pinions pleating together with mechanical precision. The vampire’s now brilliantly glowing eyes were strangely easy to read. Raziel’s mood rapidly shifted from incredulous through irritated to settle on grimly-resigned.

Kain felt himself weighed in that second silence as never before, wondering what exactly Raziel saw, now that he was wielder of the Reaver, once more his own master. Minutes dragged on after one another as the dust settled, and still the man said nothing. Resisting the urge to flinch, Kain wondered if he would have to be the one break the silence, just to relieve the itch of being inspected so closely.

“You are such a bastard, Kain.” Raziel declared at last.

Strangely the insult, or rather its world-weary delivery, was enough to bring a smile to his lips. Kain dusted himself off, released from his stasis by the vampire’s dour appraisal. Nodding, he accepted the accusation, owning it as a fair assessment, from one who knew him better than he likely knew himself. Somehow, in a way he couldn’t even begin to explain, he knew it was his Raziel that spoke. The knight’s appearance hadn’t changed, but his aura was that of a far more familiar, if less biddable creature.

There were so many questions to ask, he realized, and so little time. “You are…”

“I cannot believe you!” Raziel exclaimed abruptly. “I simply cannot comprehend how you justified to yourself using this poor idiot the way you did! Did you honestly think, for a moment that this was a good idea?”

The vampire waved off his attempt to answer, too angry to be interested in explanations. It was undeniably his Raziel. Even the furious set of his jaw was achingly familiar. A part of him spared a worry for the other Raziel’s wellbeing, but it was a cruelly small part, compared to the overwhelming sense of relief that his Raziel had not been harmed by the encounter. He couldn’t help the bubble of joy that rose in his chest, even with his favorite warming up to a proper tirade.

Raziel didn’t stop for more than a breath. “So help me god, Kain. If you intended for this insanity to happen, I swear I will do far worse than just carve out your heart this time. You are the most insufferably perverse creature in the universe. I begin to see why the false god in the pit has been tying itself in knots over you for the past thousand years. Even healed of Nuraptor’s madness, your plots are incomprehensible to anyone but yourself.” Pausing, he tilted his head as if listening to something, and then grimaced again. “I don’t know which of your supposed plans I find more inexplicable! Blithely allowing this idiot to challenge Kain for you, knowing full well what would happen? Or your ambition of cramming him into Moebius’ thrice damned machine a second time to return to his pathetic future, and assuming that nothing of any import would change! Really, Kain? That was the best you could come up with?”

“He’s been a bit of a conundrum, actually.” Kain shrugged, dispensing with any pretense of omniscience for the moment. Raziel would undoubtedly call him on it if he tried, although old habits were hard to break. “I’d have asked your advice, but I didn’t think you’d take the news particularly well. Now I see of course… that I was completely right.”

“I really hate you some days.” Raziel remarked, suddenly calm, if still more than a little bitter. He rubbed the back of his neck habitually to postpone an impending headache, moving in his borrowed body as if he had been born in it. “Today I think is going to be one of those days.”

“If I may plead my case, child. I was searching for a copy of myself when I found your alter-ego instead. I had no particular ambition to exploit you again, but I was rather desperate for an able-bodied assistant with you taken out of the game so abruptly.”

“Another Kain?” The vampire stared horrified, first at him, then at the youth still cowering next to the Pillars. “There’s already two of you! How many more did you think it would take to manage your crack-brained schemes? What the hell would you have done with the spares? Have me kill them too?”

“Don’t be daft, child. They’d have been returned to their times just as the boy was supposed to be.” Kain looked around at the utter destruction of the underground shrine and had to shake his head. Raziel’s awakening had done an excellent job of finishing the work the false-god had started. The platform they stood on had cracks as wide as a man’s arm running through it, a mere hair away from crumbling entirely into the water. At least with the ceiling gone, he could transform or teleport to safety.

Thinking of his own neck made him consider his until-now-ally’s situation. “What of the Raziel who ought to be speaking to me? What has become of him?”

“Did I devour him, you mean to ask.” The vampire looked at him measuringly. “And what if I did?”

Kain couldn’t help but feel chagrined at the cool question, knowing it showed on his face. His former lieutenant tilted his head and smiled slowly, seeming pleased with his concern. “Have no fears, Kain. Raziel is unharmed by his experience. If anything he’s found it… most enlightening. I- We- have been having a little chat. A most unique conversation, I assure you.”

Looking down at the young Kain slowly untangling himself from the Pillar, Raziel snorted in cynical amusement. “Well, not so unique, now that I think about it. But you did bring this on yourself.” He looked back at Kain. “We are causing merry-hell with the timeline, all of us here like this, aren’t we…”

“Most likely.” Kain gestured at the room around them, drawing Raziel’s attention to the way the walls faded and flexed like a desert mirage at midday. He raised an eyebrow, willing to ask for an independent analysis now that he had the luxury to do so. “What do you make of all of this?”

“I think you’ve made a royal mess of things.” Raziel answered dryly as he gazed up at the lip of the cavern above them. “More so than your usual, at any rate.”

Battered grasses hung over the edge of their pit, easily half of the above-ground shrine had dropped in with them. Somehow the Pillars had escaped the calamity, the edge of the blast just barely grazing back of the surface-platform. Stone had been chipped away from the closest of the columns, revealing that the magical artifact did indeed pierce all the way through the surface shrine on its way to the lower level and from there down to heart of the world. Wrought by magic, the Pillars had none of the seams or sections that a conventional monument would require. Before breaking, they had run straight and true as one continuous length from heaven to hell.

“And I’m sure you could have done better.” Kain flicked a claw-tip at the far wall of their sanctuary, pointing out a large section as it fractured and broke away, sliding into the water with a groaning splash.

“This was not my fault!” The vampire threw him a look of disgust. “Had I known there was another Raziel running around, I’d have tried to avoid colliding with him! Swords can’t see Kain. I was assuming you’d tell me something of that magnitude rather than keeping it as a nasty little surprise.”

“And here I thought you’d be entertained by meeting another version of yourself. You seemed willing enough to adapt to another Kain.” He couldn’t help himself, knowing he shouldn’t goad his lieutenant’s temper further didn’t stop his tongue from slipping.

Turning to face the fledgling, watching as the youth slowly found his feet, Raziel grimaced expressively. “I confess. I have a hard time tallying what I have seen thus far of your history with what I remember of you from my own beginnings. To think that I considered you pompous ass back when I was an infant! Only now to discover that the ‘you’ I remember was an improvement over how you started? It’s a wonder we lasted a thousand years. I’d have wagered the armies revolting and butchering you after the first decade.”

“Yes, well.” Kain shrugged. “Vorador did make a habit of knocking me down and kicking me on a regular basis for the first few years after the Second Crusade. Then the Third Crusade came along and set me on my backside for a considerable span… By the time I got around to raising you and the other delinquents, I had somewhat mastered the art of not speaking my more… impolitic thoughts aloud.”

“I see that.” Raziel half smiled at the abbreviated history. “I suppose I can grant that you became a little wiser, as you grew older. This one, however, seems destined to become more hidebound and close-minded, if my contemporary’s memories are to be believed. How strange, that a few fateful choices and events in this age could affect the personalities of those who will live hundreds of years later so dramatically...”

“Even the smallest beat of a butterfly’s wing may affect the path of a summer storm.” Kain quoted aloud. Raziel gave him a long look, not at all amused by the sophistry. He shrugged in silent agreement that now was probably not the time for philosophical citations, no matter how relevant they were to the current situation. Kain opted to explain his original intention instead. “If we can but convince him that the Oracle is a fraud; that would be a step in the right direction. I thought.”

Raziel raised an eloquent eyebrow at the idea. Folding his arms across his chest again, he stared down at the platform beneath them, and very possibly through it, seeming to ponder the squid’s recent antics.

“What the hell is going on?” The fledgling had found voice at last, staring at Raziel in dismay before glaring at Kain. “Why does the sword cleave to this one more intently than to either of us? Who is he?”

“No one of any importance.” Raziel stated firmly, quelling further revelations. Giving the blond vampire a thoughtful look, he seemed to weigh his options and then shook his head. “Hush now and be obedient for a time, little one. This old reprobate and I have a measure of catching up to do.”

“That’s my sword!” The youth protested. “Give it back.”

“Your sword?” The dark haired vampire blinked at the boy. The incredulous glare he focused on the younger vampire was all together too familiar. Kain resisted the urge to grin, realizing in hindsight that if Vorador had lived long enough to see his constant wrangling with Raziel at the dawn of the empire, he would have laughed himself sick. The youth’s outrage, and Raziel’s resultant consternation, had an undeniably comedic element to it.

Raziel, of course, was too focused on setting the boy in his place to notice. “Yours? No child. No, I think not. Not yet at any rate, and really, not ever. The sword ismine. You may carry it for a time, but in the end, it always was, and will be, mine.”

“It belongs to the Scion of Balance!” Young Kain disagreed angrily, still failing to see the connection.

“Do I?” Raziel turned and gave Kain an arch look, ignoring the young vampire’s complaint. “Belong to you?”

“You could just as easily say I belong to you, child. It’s one and the same.” Kain replied candidly, raking his hair into some semblance of order, refusing to be baited by the undertones in the playfully testing question. Some last remnant of his pride resisted the confession despite the obviousness of it. Raziel was always about forcing out into the air that which was already known to all involved. Most likely he simply enjoyed making him uncomfortable. In retaliation he let the words come out as if the fact was of commonplace importance, not above adding a twist of his own. “Neither of us seems to be of any use without the other.”

“How true.” His lieutenant sighed, folding his hands atop the Soul Reaver’s hilt as he let the sword’s tip rest against the floor. Looking around their crumbling shrine and up through the now vanished-roof at the sky beyond, Raziel gave the concept due consideration. Eventually he turned back to Kain, lips twitching into a sardonic half smile. “We seem to have managed moderately well together recently, at any rate. While I have not always been thrilled to be slung across your shoulders like so much furniture for the better part of ten centuries, at least it was more entertaining than being sunk into a well and forgotten about.”

Kain blinked, disturbed once again by the false-future he had heard his other Raziel predict. Even more disturbing was his lieutenants ability to joke about it. “You… know about that? How-”

Raziel tapped his forehead expressively. “I have his memories, Kain. As well as those left from my other-soul, the one that was in your blade… those are a bit of a muddle however. About what you’d expect from a tattered wraith that went mad centuries ago.” His voice was light, amused sounding, but there was a grim undertone beneath. “Thankfully I do not seem to be able to recollect the future of the Raziel who ended up imprisoned in the well. I can’t imagine that experience would be any better than my first time around with you.”

Wincing, Kain wondered if an apology would even begin to cover the damage done. “Had I known sooner, that it was you…”

“You’d have likely reacted much as this one has.” The sword-now-vampire gestured inclusively at the fledgling standing shocked at his side. “Guilt, envy, and fear of reprisal, would have made you cast the blade aside centuries before you realized you needed it. Neededme.” The last statement became almost a question, as if Raziel was daring him to disagree.

“I- Nosgoth needs you, Raziel. I have no doubt of it.” He saw the glint of amusement in his offspring’s eyes at his slip, but the man was considerate enough not to call him on it. Deciding to distract the vampire with a question of his own, he addressed the immediate concern. “The Soul Reaver is unharmed? Meeting yourself… it did no damage?”

“I’m not feeling particularly shattered, if that’s what you’re getting at.” Raziel snorted softly. Holding his blade aloft, he inspected its sinuous length critically. The Reaver blade was alive as it had rarely ever been before, still static metal, yet there was a strong impression of motion. Spiritual fire twisted in and around the blade like a shadow of what it ought to be. Kain found the effect rather dizzying as it occurred to him the blade very likely was bending, pulled this way and that by the warping of reality. Existing equally in every plane and future, the sword’s very shape might be the result of the convoluted nature of time and space? Thinking about it gave Kain a headache.

Raziel wasn’t waiting for him to gather his thoughts. He forced himself to pay attention as the man resumed his musings. “It seems that, if anything, it was the other Raziel that was imperiled by the encounter. Had the blade truly wounded him, we might not be speaking so conveniently now. But luckily he was a more competent brawler than your fledgling gave him credit for, and took hold of me voluntarily. Thus I was able to realize what was happening soon enough to interrupt the process somewhat.”

“Somewhat?”

“We are unavoidably intertwined, I fear.” Raziel gestured with his sword hand, twisting the blade in an artful curve. Kain blinked, realizing that the vampire was unable to shift his fingers along the sword’s grip. Reaver and man were bound to each other once more, the spiritual fusion exhibiting itself in the material realm.

Raziel seemed rather unconcerned by the development, shrugging candidly. “Until one of the two of us is destroyed, we seem to be stuck with one another. Not unexpected, given how your sword once cleaved whole-heartedly to me but still, it does require us to consider our next moves in the face of this development. At least we seem to be able to cohabit without causing eachother undue distress. I have the impression that he finds the ability to defer to me in these matters something of a relief.”

Kain could only marvel as the now dual Raziel adapted to his new circumstance. The last lingering breezes of the Reaver’s initial outburst had slowly but surely wicked the worst of the dust and fug out of their unlikely oubliette. But that didn’t necessarily mean the place was any more habitable than before. Water was steadily seeping up through the cracks in the platform. BBut escape was readily at hand. Was there any need to linger in the inhospitable place further? The broken Pillars, forgotten in the sudden excitement reminded him that he still had a job to finish.

Given the choice of dying on solid ground versus being left at the bottom of a monster-infested subterranean lake, Kain felt strongly that some fresh air and open sky would be preferred. Crossing to where his alter-ego stood, he checked the fledgling over for undue injury from his recent adventures. The vampire looked more than a little at-a-loss, but was otherwise no worse for the wear. He caught the boy by the shoulder-plate of his armor before it occurred to the youth that he could bolt once again. “Perhaps we should take this opportunity to be free of this place?” He framed his intention as a question to Raziel.

His second almost smiled at his politic phrasing and considered the unrecognizable shrine around them. “Perhaps you’re right. I think we’ve done all the damage we can do here. Shall we see what other ancient ruins we can disrupt before dinner?”

Kain shook his head at Raziel’s sarcasm, gesturing that he might as well lead the way upwards to the relative safety of the surface.

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A paranoid flicker of awareness came a moment too late. Kain had spent too long wholly focused on the events developing in front of him, forgetting that their reunion had an audience out of sight. Even as the impulse to check over his shoulder began, he knew he had been out maneuvered yet again. A blow caught him from chest to skull, the wet tonnage of a tree-trunk sized tentacle crushing him down and forwards into the gravel-strewn surface of the shrine’s floor. Air was pressed out of his lungs with the force of the heavy impact, his eyes going momentarily dark as his forehead cracked painfully against the carved platform. A second weight, as undeniable as the first, crushed him down further; causing his supposedly-iron-hard bones to grind against one another fit to break.

“Enough, Kain!” The echoing voice seemed to be inside of his head, Kain could taste blood as he tried to regain his wits. Face compressed against the floor as it was, he realized could hear the false god’s voice from up through the stone itself. Willing his body to move, to escape the crushing pressure, was all well and good, but it didn’t change the fact that he was pinned like a bit of road-kill beneath a wagon-wheel.

“What the hell is that thing?!” Knocked to the side as Kain fell, his younger-self scrabbled out of the way of the dripping mass of tentacles.

“Kain!” Raziel was faster to recognize the danger, but even he was caught by the ancient monster’s tactic.

At least the old beast had shown itself at last. Kain felt a burst of bitter pleasure at the sound of the fledgling’s horrified question, even as his ribs protested bitterly. The false-prophet had returned, coiling up from the lake bed to the young vampire’s dismay. Clearly the boy had already made the connection between the benevolent voice and the gruesome tentacles. It was unlikely that even it could talk its way back into the youth’s good graces, for all its eloquence. Half crushed and blinded by the weight pinning him down, he found wasn’t too proud to ask for help.

/ Raziel? /

The angry thrum of the Reaver as it carved through the air was heartening, but still the weight on his back remained. Kain grimaced as he felt additional ropes of muscle tangling his legs again, drawing him backwards across the platform even as Raziel fought to reach him. Wincing as he was dragged face first through the painful grit, Kain realized the elder god sought to pull him under. Without the Reaver’s aid, he would burn just as surely as any other vampire, a lingering and painful way to die.

Just as quickly, he wondered if this too was part and parcel of being Balance. A death was a death. The Pillars wouldn’t care what the means were so long as the end resulted. Had he not stood calmly by as Raziel had been cast forth into the water? How perfect was it that he too would feel the unjustified torment?

“Kain!” Raziel at least, didn’t sound pleased at the development. And the vampire seemed to be making headway against his foes. Kain wasn’t altogether surprised. Seemingly, the Elder God had no particular means of defending itself against a direct attack from the Reaver’s fire. The tentacles around him crackled and sparked, burning in a very real sense as they came in contact with the purifying might of the Reaver’s aura. Hearing the distant agonized cry of pain beneath the water brought a smile to his face despite the soreness of his jaw.

Finding the resolve to not be dragged down by the deluded squid, Kain found the will to dig his claws into the surface of the platform, slowing, but not stopping his inexorable slide backwards. The false god was not dissuaded by the attack, or his stubborn attempts to anchor himself. Kain felt as much as heard the deep crack of shattering rock, the section of platform beneath him giving way in a swirl of muddy water. For a moment he was dunked. The immediate and burning pain of water eating into his skin was enough to make him gasp. But seemingly the squid was not entirely done with him yet. Hauling him up in its clutches, it dangled him above the lake, taunting Raziel with him as he coughed and dripped blood and water.

“You cannot save him, Raziel.” The Elder God’s voice had an almost regretful tone as it spoke to the winged vampire readying to come to his rescue. Kain coughed again, lungs too compressed by the thick bindings of the monster’s limbs to either agree or argue. God how it stung. He’d grown forgetful of how much he disliked the burn of water after centuries of not having to worry about anything more annoying than rain. But Raziel was now categorically immune, was he not? The fact that his lieutenant was capable of following him into the lake didn’t necessarily mean that he wanted it.

“You have been a most disagreeable servant, Raziel.” The ancient fiend conceded, ignoring his musings. “Even so, you have been useful in your way. But now you have gone too far. The Soul Reaver cannot be its own master! It has always been a tool of another. That is its destiny. Your free will is no more. You made your choice. It is to the sword’s destiny you must answer to from that moment forward.”

“I don’t believe you, foulness.” Raziel shook his wings out, not swayed by the arguments presented. “Unhand him at once, and I’ll grant you a quick death. More than that I will not promise you.”

“I have seen every future, little fool. A myriad of possibility, a host of potentiality… And I assure you… in not a one, is there ever again, a Raziel.” The deep voice from beneath the water sighed, as if confiding an unpleasant truth to a friend. “For you there is no future. For the sword, well, that is another matter.”

“Redeemer and destroyer.” The false-god’s loud proclamation caused Raziel to flinch backwards just as the fledgling next to him did, startled by the volume as much as the reminder of the ancient’s prophesy. “That is what both races named your coming at the end of their bitter war. The sword of Blight or the sword of Balance, which is it to be. Now is the final moment. The final choice. Do you go with the vampire at your side? To be his sword and the world’s salvation? You renounced your Hylden champion already. But I warn you, that even the lack of choice, is still a choice… A Reaver that will not serve has no place in the skein of history… To exist as a servant to the Kain destined to master you, or to not exist at all, Raziel. Choose now.”

Chuckling darkly, the ancient oracle sighed. “Either way, I have already won.”

“No!” Raziel protested. “I refuse. There is always a path that you conceal…”

“The Hylden might make you a better offer.” The elder god chuckled again. “But I doubt it.”

“I cannot believe we have come this far just to fail now.” Raziel hissed, dismayed. “Kain! What am I to do?”

Hanging like so much meat in a butcher shop’s window, Kain blinked, amazed by the question. After years of never listening to his council, now the child was expecting him to produce an epiphany? He found the terms offered as intolerable as his offspring, but crushed and exhausted as he was, he couldn’t come up with an alternate course of action. So long as his other-self lived, and had the sword’s loyalty, there would be opportunity to defeat the false-god again at a later time. Better a delay in gratification than to accept immediate obliteration.

Raziel seemed to read his look, wings drooping visibly as he saw how tidily they were trapped, yet again.

“We haven’t failed, not yet.” The fledgling declared grimly, reminding all in the room that he was more than a mere observer. “These two fools may be hamstrung. But I am still free!”

Flinging one axe after the other, young vampire sent Havoc and Malice hurling across the gap in the platform, carving cleanly through the tentacles holding Kain aloft. Grabbing him with a coil of telekinetic ability, the youth caught him even as he fell into the water, yanking him violently forwards and into Raziel’s stunned arms.

“You will never be free, Kain.” The dark god beneath the water disagreed. His disembodied voice sounded closer than ever as the water shivered and rippled around them.

Kain struggled to disentangle himself from Raziel’s confused grip, mindful of the Soul Reaver’s edge as he got his bearings. The walls and floor of their ruined shrine shivered around them as they retreated away from the water. The elder god’s tentacles crackled with eldritch energy as they emerged from the lake and curled up and over their heads, forming a fleshy as well as magical prison. It took a moment for his befuddled brain to recognize the fact that the lapping waves were now at the same height as the floor they stood upon. Either the platform was sinking, or the level in the cavern was rising.

“I have had enough of these impossible delays. Since you will not choose for yourselves, I propose a forth avenue of destiny, one with neither Scion nor sword. Not as ideal perhaps as the empire I would have granted you, Kain, if only you had done my bidding, but acceptable for my purposes none-the-less.”

More of the creature’s thick tentacles slid to the surface of the water, tips reaching over the edge of the platform like a dozen giant fingers. Kain hissed as the powerful limbs suddenly tightened, exerting their concerted strength against the carved stones.

The floor began to crack and fissure in sweeps radiating from the center. The granite platform crushed beneath the cephalopod’s grasping arms, the uncanny limbs raking the weakened stumps of the subterranean Pillars, and their surround into the lake. Water pooled up over the edges of the tilting slabs, forcing his younger-self to scramble to avoid being splashed as he fought for a safe perch amidst the chaos. Raziel fanned his wings, uncaring that he was standing in several inches of water, studying the barrier above them with grim intensity.

“Raziel! Kain wished his lieutenant would simply act on whatever idea he was meditating on as he danced backwards from a massive fracture in the marble beneath his feet. Half of the stone suddenly gave way with a wet gurgle, the slab sinking rapidly once torn free of the Pillars. Leaping to the relative safety of a remaining fragment, Kain grabbed hold of his younger self as the youth made to join him, steading the fledgling’s landing.

“Time.” Raziel suggested.

Kain blinked. “What?”

Only after he asked did he realize the statement wasn’t meant for his benefit. He felt the throb of the Pillar’s magic jolt through his bones, shattered and broken they might be, but something of their astral essence remained. The ghost of the pillar of the Time Guardians seemed to solidify in the weak sunlight, and everything around them slowed. Splashing water became spangled sheets of unmoving glass, falling debris hung in the air as if weightless. Event the so-called-god seemed to be caught in the geas, massive mottled green brown limbs caught, coiled in midair. The silence was almost painful by comparison to the frantic noise from moments before. The world had gone entirely still. Other than the sound of his, and his fledgling’s breathing, there was nothing to move, to make noise, left in the world. He turned around him in awe, feeling entirely unaffected by the titanic feat of sorcery. The boy at his side cursed softly.

Raziel fanned his wings, motes of light gathering and breaking free from the tips of his feathers as he stood unmoved by the wonders around him. “Energy?” The vampire called softly, and the Pillar obeyed. The returning aura of the missing Pillar thrummed along Kain’s spine, leaving him shivering reflexively. The crackle of raw power, ready and willing to heed his command, summer thunder, the smell of ozone after the lightening had struck, the low rumble of the herds’ hooves as they raced across the plains and the rush of water down mighty chasms. Looking over, Kain met Raziel’s eyes as his lieutenant glanced his direction. The questions he meant to ask died on his lips with that look. All mysteries seeming to find their answers in the calm confidence that the Soul Reaver exuded. It felt strange, to apply the title to the man, and not the blade, but also right. Raziel was the blade, and the blade was the man. Without being able to explain it, he felt the truth.

Glancing left and then right at their prison of tentacles, Raziel returned his look with one that was very nearly playful, seeming to dare him to guess what would come next. The answer was on the tip of his tongue.

“States.” Raziel voiced the word at the same time as he did. And the ensuing ripple of magic nearly took him off his feet. The world rippled and flexed around them, transforming, changing. The water that had been until recently, threatening he and his young-counterpart with painful death, abruptly cooled and hardened into a thick slab of ice. Many of the tentacles were entombed beneath the rapid freeze, other were hopelessly trapped half in and half out of the lake, ice crystals forming along their exposed lengths. At the same time, the fleshy barrier over head seemed to waver and vaporize, ancient tentacles and magic dissolving into mist and air leaving nothing behind but cauterized stumps.

Looking up at the open sky above them, Raziel played his final trump. Calling to Nature as he crossed the platform to Kain’s side. Roots of every size and shape imaginable seemed to ripple to life, crawling down the walls of their cavern, stabilizing the fragile sides of the sinkhole with their matted tangle. At the same time a fresh breeze seemed to arise from the very rock itself, leaving those caught in its way feeling strangely buoyant. Even the ice seemed brighter some how, the sunlight more clear, the stone steadier under foot. The world and all it’s splendors was suddenly present making itself known in a thousand tiny ways. Raziel tucked a hand beneath the fledgling’s shoulder guiding him to stand. Not waiting for the youth to critique, his lieutenant easily scooped him up in his arms and wings spread, vaulted upwards with the help of the willing zephyr. Kain blinked in amazement at how easy Raziel had made the magic look. Forgetting for a moment that he too would be best served by a quick exit.

A shiver from one of the gruesome tentacles half buried in the ice heralded the potent magic’s fading power. Gravel clattered as it finally finished falling, clattering softly against the ice. Kain leapt to a convenient ledge half way up the wall, finding it an easy jump to another, slightly higher lip in the crumbling ruin. The sound of cracking ice was his only warning as the Elder god fought free of his restraints, reaching up after him with tattered looking coils. Kain laughed as he saw yet another ledge and teleported across the cavern to it. The squid was a moment slower, sucker-covered limb tearing down his previous perch with a wordless bellow of rage. Another tentacle was already snaking up along the side of his new shelf, but Kain could now see the surface, and did not wait to see what the pretender-god might do.

“No!” The monster complained angrily as he slipped out of its reach. Kain sighed in relief as his body reformed itself some ten yards from the crumbling Pillars’ shrine, startling Raziel who happened to be looking his direction. The false-god’s tentacles were not long enough seemingly, for the creature to do more than forlornly test the sides of its burrow, vainly hoping that something useful might still be in reach of its clutches. “Damn you, Kain! You have not won yet!”

“Nor have I lost.” He smirked as he dusted himself off, pleased to have survived yet another attempted coup. Really he had Raziel to thank for that. Being rescued by his sword seemed to be becoming a habit of late. There were worse things, he supposed.

“Well. That was exciting.” He couldn’t resist the quip as he turned to examine how Raziel fared.

His lieutenant simply stared at him as if he was mad, more ragged and dusty than ever. The boy sprawled at his feet looked up at him with similar sentiments on his face. The three of them looked similarly disheveled, he decided, examining his own arms. No better than the Hylden wretches who had dug their way to the surface of the swamp.

There was no time for the nicety of bathing however. The sinkhole in front of the Pillars grew steadily wider for a few minutes as Nature’s presence waned. Forcing them to draw back further still in an attempt to stay on stable ground. Kain shook his head at the mess. The scene went far beyond any he had ever encountered. The mystical monument was almost unrecognizable after their repeated abuse. He blinked as the stump of the Pillar of Conflict fell forwards, disappearing into the watery oubliette with a splash. There would be no founding an empire on the platform now. Kain mused. There was hardly any platform left. If he perched on the remains of the Pillar of Death, he might cast a baited line into the hole just in front of him and play at fishing for watery fiends.

“Please tell me that can be fixed?” Raziel asked. Glancing sideways, Kain wondered if the man was being rhetorical. A second Pillar rolled forwards into the growing pit as he tried to think of a reply, making him cringe again. This was not how the future was supposed to begin.

“I think it safe to say, that I am open to suggestions, child.” He advised candidly as he felt the tremor of a distant earthquake, wondering if it was rude to offer to take bets on which portion of his legacy would be next to collapse into the Elder God’s hovel. There were undoubtedly more productive things he could be doing with his time, but heaven only knew what they were.