“For a time I drifted, strength ebbing and when I finally awoke it was to the distant lamentations of wandering souls.”
.
Slowly Raziel pushed his eyes open, observing for some time without moving the distorting blue haze through which he viewed the sky. The sun overhead was a blue ball of flimsy light that seemed to burn with a fire that burned like one on a hearth.
For a short while after regaining consciousness, his body was numb and refused to respond to his commands. His sense of time had been distorted and he could not say how long he had been lying there before he had awakened.
With some effort he forced himself up into a sitting position. The exertion made his head swim and he held it in both hands, groggily shaking himself to clear the cloudiness from his mind.
Around him was the unmistakable blue tinged perspective of the spectral realm, the distant whistle of ethereal winds echoing on the horizon. This meant that after he had entered that porthole he must have lost his physical manifestation.
.
“I had no earthly idea of where I was, only that the distorting city of Fanum-Divus was left behind.”
.
Due to its impossible location Fanum-Divus had had no shadowy opposite in the realm of the dead and as such his being on this plane proved that he was no longer there. But precisely where he had ended up was a mystery to him.
Glancing around he observed tall stone walls of some building to his left, distorted into slanted columns by the spectral world geography. From the architecture it looked to be part of a common human dwelling. There were other such buildings around as well, dotted off across a courtyard of stone.
He seemed to be on the outskirts of some settlement, surrounded by thick black pines that loomed up large and menacing in the spectral ambience.
This caused Raziel some confusion. He had left for Fanum-Divus from the corrupted future of Kain’s fallen empire, where the only human structure had been the Citadel. This building suggested that he had travelled back in time. But how was that possible? Had journey from the space between nothing and everything allowed them to inadvertently traverse time?
Or perhaps the journey using the power of the Nexus Stone had been so unstable that it had resulted in their dropping into the time stream? Thought of the stone made him look down at his chest where he had kept the stone, clipped to his clan drape. It was gone. Yes of course, he had managed to give it to Kain after all. Its absence caused him no small amount of relief.
Travelling with an artefact that if used properly could destroy him had been a little unnerving to say he very least.
With one hand against the side of the wall for support, the blue wraith managed to get to his feet.
“Ariel?” He asked out load, reaching into his mind to that new presence within his soul. “Can you hear me?” She was still there but her essence was more distant, diminished somehow and he sensed from her a great fatigue and weariness. That he could more then understand. He felt drained himself, overcome by that taxing return trip.
He only hoped Kain and Ewoden had managed to survive it. He would have to find them.
But as of this moment Raziel had other priorities. His essence felt weak and drained, all his reserves of energy gone. He would have to replenish them and quickly.
The blue wraith explored, watching around for wandering lost souls he could devour. As he walked he observed the buildings he past and concluded this settlement was a human town, perhaps a village. A community such as this would surely have the souls of deceased members of the society circling around.
His intuition proved right. It was not two minutes before he spotted the soul, floating around the rooftop of a building at the far end of town; perhaps it had lived here before it died.
Raziel made his way towards it. But before he could take the opportunity to devour it, the soul quivered in dismay and then was drawn down. With an agonised squeal the spirit was ensnared by the grasp of a Sluagh. The craven spectral creature drew the soul in and it vanished down its gaping maw with a moan of agony.
There was a pack of them, perhaps about seven in all, lurking in and around those houses. Raziel paused to observe them, counting each in turn and noting the largest, a quadrupedal creature lurking around the back of a building that had the look of a tavern.
For any other pack enemy Raziel would have waited until he could come up with a better strategic plan. But for Sluagh, the scavengers of the underworld, that was not necessary.
He charged at them, darting in quick and fast. The nearest turned to see him coming and let out a startled yelp. The blue wraith’s talons rank into its strange flesh and he cleaved it, slicing into its body. Fatally injured the body of the spectral creature went transparent, loosing cohesion and becoming ethereal.
Raziel wasted no time and drew down his cowl with one hand. The creature wailed but like water down a drain it was sucked inside, its energy becoming Raziel’s own. His strength bolstered Raziel spun about to meet the enraged attack of two more. Hissing and spitting like rapid dogs they charged him together, leaping up at the last moment.
Raziel ducked and rolled new life in his movements as he dove under their attack and out of range. Instantly he was back on his feet, talons spread.
The two recovered and separated, trying to come at him from both sides. That was a mistake. Raziel ran at one of them and slashed it through the face with his talons. It shrieked and staggered back, the spiritual energy that was its lifeblood seeping through the claws it held to the wound.
The second tried to attack the blue wraith from behind but he spun and lashed out with a kick at the last second, knocking it backwards. As it staggered he focused his mind and struck at it with the full force of a telekentic bolt. The impact at such close range sent the creature flying.
The injured Sluagh came at him again but he dodged its clumsy lunge and slashed down its unprotected back with his talons. With its energy lost its body faded, becoming transparent and the blue wraith devoured it instantly; drawing the beast in and swallowing it whole.
With most of his strength restored Raziel turned in time to see the largest member of the pack, the quadruped as it galloped at him.
It attacked him with arms outspread to smash but Raziel side stepped avoiding the lunge. Risking the energy sapping affect he summoned the wraith blade and with a flourish he cleaved the creature across the chest slicing deep.
The Sluagh recoiled in pain but Raziel pressed his counter attack, twisting the blade of his soul deeper inside until it burst out the other side. Impaled thus, the creature lost its vital composition and Raziel devoured it right there and then.
Like with all pack animals the courage of any Sluagh was a reflection of the strength of the pack itself. With its apparent leader devoured and another few of their number lost, the others decided that they would not challenge him and turned and ran.
But Raziel did not simply let them go. He needed to restore all of his reserves of energy and so he methodically hunted them all down one by one.
When he was finished all his energies had been returned and his body felt strong and fully responsive once more.
He tried to take some of that energy and transfer it to Ariel. He had no idea if that would actually work she was not after all an entity like himself but he felt it worth the try.
Her essence basked in the energy but did not seem to improve. Clearly she was going to need time rather then feeding.
With his needs sated, Raziel decided to satisfy his curiosity. The lay of the land slopped and he made his way uphill a little way from the settlement. Here the trees thinned and parted, allowing him to look out at the horizon.
.
 “Nosgoth lay before me, a welcome sight indeed. But I could not tell precisely where in Nosgoth I had been fortunate enough to emerge. Was Kain nearby? And Ewoden?”
.
With the blue tint of the spectral realm he could not say if the low sun was rising or falling and so could not determine which way was north. Before him the hill slopped down sharply on the other side to a broad plain. In the distance there was a body of water but it was too far away to make out clearly. There were no distinguishing features to help him indentify his position.
..
“I had to find a conduit back into the physical world and investigate.”
.
That was when he spotted the chapel. It was set just a little down hill away from the settlement, surrounded by a thick iron fence which encircled a graveyard. Graves would mean bodies and bodies meant a way out of the spectral realm.
As disgusted as he was with this method of manifestation it was presently the only means available to him. Swallowing his pride he began forward down the hill towards the chapel.
A tree had collapsed across the back end of the graveyard, allowing him to enter without need of going through the chapel itself. Once inside he had his choice of suitable vessels. He settled for one with a simple grave stone near the back end. A moment of concentrate and he projected his essence down through the earth. Filtering in he settled into the corpse and felt himself shift back into the physical world.
The coffin had been buried deeper down then he had expected and so it took a while for him to pry himself out of the earth. As he emerged, the human corpse transforming itself into his usually ghoulish visage, he was glad to see nobody around to observe him. If a priest in the chapel had come outside to see him climbing out of a grave it would have given him no end of trouble.
He paused to shake the dirt free from his body and to check that he was all in one peace. The transformation of the new body was complete and it was as it was supposed to be, if never entirely pleasing to the eye.
The air was cold and the ground covered in gathering frost, misty and damp. The sky was a pale orange and growing darkener, stars appearing one by one in the firmament; a twilight.
Raziel could now judge that north was to his right and as such the broad expand with the water in the distance was west.  
“Raziel... Raz…” Ariel’s voice whispered in his mind, so faint he could barely hear her.
.
“Clearly the return journey had been as taxing for her as it had for me. As long as I could still feel her presence however there was no cause for alarm.”
.
He needed to discover precisely where he was and what era he had been spat out into. To that end he began back up the hill to its summit to behold the village he had just past.
It was deserted.
He hadn’t really expected otherwise as the settlement had seemed very sparse but from the spectral realm there really had been so way to know for sure.
From the state of the buildings it did not seem like the town had been abandoned, perhaps only one or two years at most.
Glancing back he observed the chapel as it really was, the door left open and swinging in the wind.
There was nothing here to find that might provide him answers. Grimly Raziel turned and started down the hill on the other side. A thick forest of pine trees lined the slopes, thick with obscuring underbrush. But the forest was dark and foreboding, a sense of decay in the air.
If Raziel were to hazard a guess then he would suppose he was in an era after the corruption or the fall of the Pillars.
Being back on Nosgoth felt strange, as if somehow being in Fanum-Divus even for such a short time had conditioned him to expect an impossible landscape through which to traverse. The mediocrity of his surroundings now was even more disconcerting then the initial sight of the impossible city of the Divus had been.
There was evidence of a road nearby and following that, Raziel saw other abandoned buildings. A wayside tavern with a crumbling roof, a watch tower set onto a rise with the door left wide open and a dark and empty barn. This might have once been a prosperous farming community, perhaps even managing to survive in a future were the land produced less and less food.
This abandonment seemed sudden and quick. What could have driven them away from this place?
There was another structure up ahead, a large wall blocking a narrow ravine on the road. As Raziel approached it he discovered it to be a gatehouse, the way to the land beyond open with the portcullis raised.
His attention however was focused on the craving that encompassed the gatehouse itself, covered in thick vines, ivy and encroaching moss but legible.  
.
“The open mouth of a proud lion, fangs poised to bite... From Kain’s boasted exploits I knew this symbol well enough and it was my first clue to my location.”
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The lion had its paws down either side of the opening and its mouth made the gate itself, stone fangs curving over to give it a macabre sort of appearance. Raziel saw that its eye rockets held tinted green glass, now long dulled and cracked in the elements.
.
“This was the emblem of the Kingdom of Willendorf, a human monarchy that had existed when Kain had still been human. In fact, Kain’s human family had sworn fealty to this throne. This was a good indicator that I was somewhere in the south east of Nosgoth and judging from the decayed state of this monument, it was probably some time after Willendorf’s twilight.”
.
Willendorf had been one of the last human kingdoms to fall to Kain’s empire, holding out even longer then the capital at Meridian. It had taken many combined legions of Dumahim and Turelim to finally force its gates and allow the empire to claim dominion over all of Nosgoth.
Here he was long before this kingdom would fall but also long after it’s prime as a powerful and influential monarchy.
.
“There was still no sign of either Kain or Ewoden. I resolved to explore the surrounding land until I found any trace of them.”