The mountain was a flat toped plateau, rising eerily out of the surrounding peaks like a pillar of stone; its top engulfed in trailing snow clouds. Its rock and gravel insides were near jet black, frozen over with the cold and the mere sight of it conjured feelings of decay and rigid death.
His bats came together on a hilltop just before the base of the mountain; the flying rodents condensing and solidifying until they became the form of the vampire. Kain took a moment to ensure his form was reconstituted and then looked up with a grim frown at the rock peak.
The snow was still thigh deep but the blizzard had lessened so that only a gentle fall filled the air but not enough to obscure the view of the mountain.
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“And so again I beheld the mountain stronghold of the Paladin, Malek. His bastion rose high like a sword point thrust up out of the belly of the earth, a dark shadow against the snowy twilight.”
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He had not enjoyed his explorations of the mountain and the castle at the top. There had been no living humans inhabiting that fortress and so Kain had been starving for blood while he endured enemies had none to offer. Malek’s stronghold had been a filled with a collection of ghosts, forced to relive their past encased in suits of armour.
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“I have ventured here once before in my quest to hunt down and destroy the Circle of Nine. While Malek’s bastion had not proven to be impenetrable, the Paladin himself had bested me and I had been forced into retreat.”
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His right arm raised, Kain held the Nexus stone out before him; its beacon pinpoint of light directing him onward and up towards the peak of the mountain. He had feared that this place was the destination the stone was directing him towards and he felt only morbidity resigned once that had been confirmed.
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“The Nexus Stone was directing me to this forgotten peak with urgency. What secrets did this place hide that I had not unearthed on my first visit?”
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There was a loud clatter of stones nearby and Kain turned as he folded his arms, looking sidelong across his shoulder at the large red furred wolf that lurked nearby. Ewoden had managed to keep up with him even while he travelled so quickly with his bats although he looked a little lathered; shaking his body to shift the snowflakes that were settling on him.
The emissary’s ears were pricked forward, occasionally twitching as he listened for any noise that might give away the presence of hidden enemies. With Nosgoth under the current domination of the pseudo Sarafan, Kain was more then inclined to add a second set of senses to sniff out trouble.
“I smell men.” The lycanthrope declared. While a vampire’s sense of smell was far better then a humans it paled in comparison to the nose of a Lycanthrope. Kain decided that given how intractable Ewoden had so far been he could take his word for it.
“How many?” He asked.
The wolf sniffed some more, scratching at the thick snow with the claws on its front limbs.
“About two dozen, it’s hard to say for sure.” He replied and sat up on his haunches very much like an actual wolf. “I smell too much blood on them.”
Kain pursed his lips. No doubt ahead there was a bandit camp, highway men using the mountain before then as a shield to protect them from the elements. Just to the south there was a major road where trade and commerce between east and west travelled, a prime site for pillage and plunder. Apparently the pseudo Sarafan’s control was not yet firm enough to wipe out such parasites upon their empire.
The vampire was not impressed by such lax an attitude to banditry. As Emperor, he had ruled a domain devoid of it, the practise stamped out.
“Have they seen us?” He asked without looking around, eyes fixed on the mountain before him.
“I doubt it, too much snow in the air.” Ewoden said with a low growl to his voice, the wind blowing its fur around his mane. Kain considered it for a moment and unfolded his arms.
“Raziel told me that Werewolves are like vampires in that they have a blood thirst.” He said, recalling the brief explanation the wraith had given him as to the origin and nature of this strange breed.
Ewoden nodded.
“Aye.” He confirmed and gave him a look down the length of his muzzle. “Although for us the meat, rather then the blood, is more nourishing.”
While food was not required for a vampire’s survival it did not hurt to eat regular food if it was desirable, which more often then not it wasn’t. Kain had preferred to let his body adapt to a pure blood diet rather then dilute it with human food. The lycanthropes apparently retained an appetite for fresh meat.
The vampire nodded and a smile broached his lips.
“Then I suggest we stop for a meal.” He said.
The bandit camp was set into a towering large crevice in the side of the mountain’s almost vertical cliff, lined with defensive stakes around a make shift defensive log fort.
It was hidden from the main road by a rock outcrop so unsuspecting travellers might wander almost directly into the lap of the highwaymen before they realised their deadly peril.
The bandits were no doubt used to only lightly defended merchant caravans. When Kain had awakened in the twilight years of the Sarafan Lord, he had encountered similar bandits in the canyons outside Meridian’s walls. They had taken their own preservation and secrecy much more seriously than these earlier bandits.
The battle with them, if it could really be called a battle, did not take very long at all. The bandits numbered roughly around thirty, slightly more then Ewoden’s two dozen estimate but they did not make too much difference.
The Lycanthrope attacked first, leaping over the wall of their log fort and tearing into the flesh of a sentry. He screamed out once in horror and pain before his neck was crushed and the head fell free from his body.
Shouts of alarm came from within the cave and men with sword, bows and crossbows came out to retaliate. The emissary swept down into them, claws and teeth rendering their way through flesh with ease.
While the highwaymen were so focused on fighting with the lycanthrope, Kain chose that moment to attack as well. Jumping high up and over the log wall he came down behind a bandit trying to load a crossbow. Hearing the footsteps behind him, the man turned but Kain grabbed him from behind and slammed his talons directly into his back; piercing the leather armour he wore and stabbing directly into his lung.
Fangs pierced skin and Kain drank deeply, letting the blood flow to him from the dying human. Once he had drained the man dry he kicked the body forward.
Two men with sword turned to see him and instantly they rushed at him instead, running from the fight with the emissary to fight this new foe.
Their swings were clumsy and Kain parried them away with his bracer with some contempt. Snapping his arm forward he grabbed one of them around the throat, his talons puncturing his wind pipe with ease and the grip crushing bones.
He tossed the body aside and reached out with his other hand to telekinetically grab the other bandit, lifting the struggling man high into the air.
Throwing his arm forward Kain hurled the man through the air to smash him against the side of their own fortifications where he burst into pieces from the force of the impact.
The rest of the confrontation was short and messy, a brutal savage struggle with left bodies pooling blood everywhere in the encampment. Limbs lay everywhere, arms and legs scattered from the body with pieces of torn flesh hanging loose from the bone.
Kain himself had drained perhaps about six of them himself, giving him an intense surplus of energy. He felt fortified as ever he might be and the dull ache in his chest had subsided to a background hum.
Looking over he saw that Ewoden was still feeding, his wolf form savagely tearing off hunks of meat from a pile of carcasses piled toward him. He ate like an animal, tearing and slashing to swallow mixed chunks of flesh, bone and organs all rich with blood.
Kain watched the process with a kind of macabre fascination. He perceived that this gory gluttony was not a regular practise for a lycanthrope but rather Ewoden sensed that they might not find more sustenance for a while and was fortifying himself as well.
It would be a wise decision on their part. Up in the Bastion above, as Kain painfully recalled, there was no source of fresh blood to be found. The place was sterile, devoid of any life at all.
The vampire raised his arm and looked at the Nexus Stone attached to it, seeing it glow once more. Its beam of light was now pointed directly upwards towards the peak of the mountain itself.
“Since you seem to be busy eating I will go on ahead.” He remarked. Ewoden did not pause in his meal, still too busy with the corpse upon which he was feasting using his claws to wrench open a rib cage to get at the tender organs.
The vampire paused to evaluate his companion’s general physique and then judge it against the physical requirements needed for the climb. The near vertical cliff side was a challenge to scale with few foot or hand holds.
“You can scale the cliff without difficulty?” He asked, deciding to let the emissary judge for himself.
Ewoden chewed on something, spat out a fragment of bone and then turned his feral head to look up at the cliff above him.
“Of course.” He growled and then went back to his meal. Kain managed a slight grin
“Then I will await you at the top.” He said and closed his eyes, concentrating briefly before his body broke apart into a swarm of bats.
The flying rodents dispersed up into the air, flying high up away from the carnage below. The peak of the Bastion loomed high above, rising higher then the mountains around it. 
The bats flew on, surging up through layers of cloud with snow falling all around them. After an exhausting climb they cleared the top and beheld from the air, the castle of Malek’s Bastion.
The castle was built to the very sides of the peak, the walls high and black against the snow.
Flying around the castle, Kain saw through the eyes of his bats that the fortress had suffered some decay. Roof had collapsed in places and thick snow was piled up inside the walls, blocking many entrances he had used before.
The fortress still held to itself that bleak, uninviting quality he had observed eons ago. It was a place for dead things and where any form of life was the intruder. The bats circled several times before they descended into the castle’s main central courtyard, their bodies merging together back into Kain’s main form.
Once solid, the vampire surveyed the castle with his own eyes; recalling his struggle through this place to see to Malek himself and destroy him. That effort had ended in failure.
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“In the era I which I was born the Bastion had been a relic, a throw back to the era of the Sarafan and the only remaining building of their order. From this stronghold Malek had stood watch over all the members of the Circle and brooded over the failure that cost him his flesh and left him entrapped in cold steel. Vorador would smile about that no doubt.”
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He glanced down at the Nexus Stone on his arm, seeing that the illumination within its polished central jewel begin to fade and disappear. He held his arm up to see it more distinctly but the light continued to fade, the jewel growing dark.
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“The Nexus Stone’s glow faded. Clearly I was at my intended destination.”
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Only the question still remained as to why.
Kain’s memories of the Bastion were not too precise. When he had been here last he had been continually suffering from blood malnutrition to take much note of the castle’s layout but what he did recall informed him that Malek had filled his fortress with spikes, traps and all other unpleasant means of repulsing uninvited guests. While perhaps, without some occupying force to maintain it, the Bastion had suffered some decay Kain was of no doubt traps like that would still remain and be a danger.
At the far end of the courtyard was an open doorway, leading into the castle’s interior main hall. Kain made towards it and stepped inside out of the snow, although the flagstones under his feet were cold and slick with ice.
Lining the walls he saw that frozen there, standing still to attention to either side were suits of armour. Inside, frozen solid and blackened by ice and snow, were the corpses of the men Malek had abandoned to remain here as dead sentinels. They might very well have been the same dead bodies he had observed when he had been here before.
Kain did not linger to stare as there was an odd smell coming from deeper inside that caught his attention, familiar but it took him a moment to recognise the tang of smoke. Following the corridor and into the large main hall, Kain found its source, much to his surprise. Huddled in one corner there was a burning camp fire, crackling with pieces of wood and paper that kept it burning even in this cold.
There was a figure seated nearby on a piece of stone, covered by a thick black woollen cloak and was huddled in on itself against the chill so the vampire could not see its face.
Frowning Kain began towards the figure and as he neared, he was able to make it out for a human; old perhaps in his eighties if he was any judge.
The old man looked frail, his skin a crisscross of wrinkles and his beard the exact same shade of white as the snow. He huddled close to the fire, bent gnarled hands clutching tightly around his black robe fur robe to keep himself warm with its hood pulled up over his head.
His beard was long enough to reach his chest had an unkempt quality to it as if the old man had never once combed or cut it.
“Wasn’t expecting company up here.” He said without turning as Kain began to approach. The vampire hesitated once before setting himself and carrying on walking quite openly up to the fire and staring at the old human across from it.
The old man kept his eyes on the flames fir a moment and then turned his head to look up at Kain, his eyes tinged white with encouraging blindness. If he was not blind already he was clearly near sighted.
“But you’re welcome none the less, vampire.” Despite the old man’s faded eyesight clearly he recognised Kain for what he was without much difficulty. What was even odder was that he did not seem bothered by it in the slightest.
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 “The human was just like any other of age of his kind but watching him I felt an unease I could put into words.”
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If he wanted to Kain could have killed the only man with a single blow but the mere thought somehow left him feeling very so slightly queasy, as if he were afraid of the damage he might inadvertently cause the frail human. Why he should feel so he did not understand and it made him feel even less secure.
“Who are you old man and how did you come to be here?” The vampire asked bluntly, failing to keep some of his apprehension out of his voice. The old man paused to sniff and wipe his nose with the back of one hand.
“I climbed, vampire.” He said without the slightest hint of any sarcasm. “Took me a while with my bad back but I managed it.”
He said it so matter-of-factly Kain was almost tempted to believe it if he had not the example of the old mans frailty right before him.
 “It’s quiet and private up here.” The old man was explaining while the vampire regarded him with a skeptical eye. “I’ve grown to like that in my old age.”
Kain remembered briefly a strange similar encounter he had had once before, a long time ago, with a huddled old human stirring a pot who had not reacted with fear to Kain’s presence. That strange homeless man had been quite mad and so Kain had passed off the lack of fear to his insanity. The old man here had no such excuse.
“As for whom I am, you can call me Ezekiel.” He said with a smile causing his beard to pull up around his face. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”