“The old man was a simple peasant in manner and form but there was something about him, something I could neither see nor sense, that left me feeling precarious.”
.
Ezekiel smiled as if sensing Kain’s consternation, which admittedly the vampire did not go to any great pains to keep from showing on his face. His old wrinkled face, illuminated by the light of his small camp fire was alight with some private amusement. But while the expression was jovial, Kain felt uneasy at it and there was something about his milky eyes that set his teeth on edge. Kain had seen many an old man over the centuries and one was much the same as another usually but this one was different; unique.
Ezekiel blinked and then half turned his head to look past the vampire back down the way he had come entering the ice ridden castle. Outside it was snowing heavily obscuring the view.
“Looks like your friend’s on his way.” He commented, stroking his beard with one almost skeletal hand. “Or at least I assume he’s a friend of yours, given as how he smells of blood from so far off.”
Kain looked back briefly over his shoulder and sniffed. He too could smell blood coming closer. Ewoden must have finished his meal of the bandits below by now and was ascending the cliff side to join him. It was a powerful stench indeed and Kain was not overly surprised that even a human had been able to smell it.
Instead he turned back and fixed Ezekiel with a hard stare.
“How do you know what I am, old man?” He asked, curious as to how some senile old human could have perceived his true nature with a single glance. Ezekiel levelled him a disappointed sort of look, glancing from his talons to the crest of horns around his hairline.
“It’s not hard to guess.” He concluded with a shrug. “And it bothers me not.”
Kain’s expression turned quizzical and the old man carried on.
“I’ve come up here to be alone when I die so harming me will get you nothing and cost me the same.”
Kain looked around at their surroundings with clear disbelief on his face.
“You choose this frozen, lifeless ruin to be your grave?” He asked, voice tinged with appalled scepticism.
“The castle?” Ezekiel asked with a frown apparently and surprisingly sharing the sentiments. “It keeps the wind off me but it’s not why I’m here.” The old man bent to pat the ground between his feet. “I’ve always been fond of the mountains, but this one has always attracted me.”
Then he raised his hand up above his head gesturing high. “The highest peak in Nosgoth I think, if a man stands on its top he’s closer to god to any human can be.” He smiled as if to himself. “And in my situation I think that’s more than appropriate.”
The vampire looked from the ground to the ceiling as if judging the difference between heaven and earth and let an amused chuckle escape past his lips.
“You’re looking for god in the wrong place.” He commented. Ezekiel seemed not to take offence by the remark and turned back to his fire and began prodding it back into life with a stick which had lain at his feet.
 Kain stood there for a long moment simply staring at him before he sharply turned his head with a snort of disgust. He tore his mind away from the issue of the strange old man. What did it matter to him if some elder eccentric chose Malek’s castle of all places to end his inconsequential life? He had other more pressing concerns.
Turning he strode out of the castle hall and back into the snow, letting it settle over him as he gazed out at the battlements surrounding the massive main courtyard. The thick snowfall made everything beyond a few feet in front of him the merest suggestion of a shadow.
Kain waited patiently until he caught a flicker of movement off to his left, a large shaggy shape rearing up over the edge of the castle wall.
The shape paused to shake off the snow like a dog and then dropped down onto the flagstones and began towards him. Its shape widened bit by bit as it came near and then condensed, shrinking down into a shape that was human in form.
As Kain’s eyes made out Ewoden’s shape he had indeed reverted back to his human visage although there was still blood splattered over his bare chest and jaw line. The emissary paused to clean his mouth with the back of his hand.
“You are satisfied now?” Kain asked with a raised eyebrow at such gluttony. Ewoden did not look repentant and only appeared mildly satisfied.
“I will not need to feed again for another month.” He said and Kain didn’t doubt it if he had consumed that much blood and fresh meat.
“You are more energy efficient then my kind then.” The vampire commented. His own breed needed to feed once every couple of days at the very least and while Lycanthropes consumed more in a single sitting they could apparently go for longer without. This gave Ewoden an advantage in this landscape where fresh prey was scarce.
“This place smells of frozen death.” The emissary said looking around at the place, nostrils flaring in distaste.
“I would more surprised if it did not.” Kain replied following his gaze around to look at the black stone walls that hide the lethal interior of the castle that he remembered from view.
“What do you seek in this castle tomb?” At the question the vampire paused and looked down at his arm where the Nexus stone remained, gone dark now but a reminder of its role in leading him back to one of the less pleasant environments he had had the misfortune of exploring. Apparently whatever force swayed it was satisfied in simply getting him to this place. It was up to him to find out why.
“I am not sure.” He admitted in a low tone. As if sensing or perceiving the strange circumstance that had drawn them near, the emissary snorted and half turned to look at the battlements again.
“Then I will patrol the mountain and locate any more intruders.” He said. “Ensure we are undisturbed while we are here.”
“There is an old man encamped down here in the hall.” Kain said without looking up. Ewoden looked back over his shoulder.
“Is he dangerous?” He asked in a flat voice, the kind of tone reversed for one contemplating doing a distasteful but necessary task.
“One old man?” The vampire asked back with a frown, looking at the stone by holding up his arm. “No, leave him be.” He managed a soft sneer. “If he causes trouble we can always kill him then.”
Ewoden’s face remained flat but he nodded once.
“Aye, so be it then.”
With that he was gone back into the snow and Kain could hear the sound of his footsteps fading away.
The idea of spending any more time then absolutely necessary in this place was almost intolerable and so Kain thought it best to begin his investigations immediately. Grimly he re-entered the hall walking past the campfire where Ezekiel was still warming his tired old body by his first. Ignoring the old human he past him to a doorway on the far side and walked out into the castle proper.
As he walked down the black stone passageways the memories of this haunted, evil place came flooding back to him. Malek had built like bastion like a death trap, corridors and chambers filled with lethal mechanisms of spikes and curved metal blades designed to thwart any intruder to his domain. Many of these had rusted into immovability without their caretaker to keep them operational; although Kain did find one or two still functioning. But his previous experience with the traps allowed him to navigate his way around them.
.
“Malek the Paladin has been a formidable enemy during my fledgling travels, as cruel was he was relentless. For even though his spirit was agonisingly bound to animate a suit of armour, he condemned the souls of the Sarafan warriors who had followed him to the same fate, heedless of the pain he must have known it would cause them.”
.
Scattered in the corridors he past here and there were pieces of old rumour, rusted brown almost completely to the floor. Finding one large pile of metallic debris scattered across his path the vampire bent to examine them. These Kain knew for it had been his own sword that had dispatched them. They were ghouls, mere shadows of the men they had been; like Malek bound to the armour they had worn in life.
Kain hoped that with the armour so damaged the soul had been freed from its bondage. If not then it was doomed to eternity trapped within rust.
.
“While Malek’s soul had been bound by the necromantic skill of Mortanious, the paladin had used great alien machines to do the same to his men. I had deactivated the abominable devices during my first journey here but their origin and true nature had always remained a mystery to me.”
.
In the next chamber he found one of these machines, dull and inert for a century now. The chamber itself was large with a huge stone vaulted ceiling and seemed only just large enough to hold the machine, indeed the contraption carried on beneath the floor descending down. It was an alien construction with many protruding extremities whose function he could not guess at. It was vaguely ring shaped with dusty, cracked green glass containers held around its outside edge.
When he had been here last the machine had almost seemed to scream with agony as it did its job of forging souls to inanimate objects. Now it was as silent as a corpse.
Kain stood looking at it for a long time before he frowned and looked off towards his right, towards a plain ordinary looking wall. It looked perfectly natural with no seems but something had drawn his attention.
The vampire approached and laid a palm against the dark stone.
.
“I could feel moving air coming through the cracks in this wall.”
.
For a moment he believed he might be mistaken but there it was again, the definite touch of slow but moving air. There as a cavity behind this wall.
Clenching his fist the vampire drew his arm back and then slammed it forward, reinforcing the blow with a telekinetic bolt that struck the wall as his hand. The wall fractured and then burst inward, fragments of dark brick scattering down a long flight of curved stairs leading down into darkness.
Kain scowled for his own inattentiveness. Had he not been so focused in this attempt to assassinate Malek when he had been here before he might have perceived these hidden entrances.  
A click of his talons summoned the soft illumination of magical light and Kain descended down the stairs, feeling them grow colder with every step. Dust lined the walls and the vampire had the immediate sense that this section had not been opened for a very long time.
As he descended, he saw that after he past a certain point the architecture of the stairs abruptly changed. From one step to the next he past from dark stone to slippery metal and for an awkward moment he almost lost his footing.
The stairs then widened out and the vampire found himself looking into another chamber which seemed to be directly below the first. The alien machine fed down through the ceiling and into the floor again.
.
“This place differed much from the architectural design of the rest of Malek’s keep and the tunnel showed evidence of being deliberately blocked off. What had the Paladin desired to hide so much inside his own stronghold?”
.
Kain clenched his fist tighter and the orb of magical light that was glowing at his command widened and grew, casting longer shadows over this secondary room. A few doorways lead off into other rooms but the walls between each archway were covered in pictographs all drawn with dark straight lines like blotches of spilled ink.  As he gazed around the chamber he saw something that awoke in him a memory, recalling a place he had all but forgotten.
.
“I recognised the chamber’s architecture from other ruins, such as the Forgotten Fort Vorador had showed me when we had come to find the Seer. This was a Hylden Room and the murals upon the walls were typical of their artistry.”
.
He had seen this style of mural in the forgotten forts temple complex, Hylden artistry with their unique distinctive style of black lines. Kain approached the walls to look more closely at them. He had long put stock in the recorded histories laid out in mural form by the ancient races.
Depicted seemingly in full proportions was the image of a Hylden, or at least it seemed to be Hylden. The depicted being was unlike the emaciated skeletons they had become.
.
“The figure before me was unlike any of their kind I had seen before, portrayed with nobility and calm, a regal figure of authority that resonated with wisdom. I wondered whether this was an accurate likeness or merely the work of an artist prostituting his ethics to produce something pleasing to the model.”
.
He almost seemed human with his nose, eyes and mouth but with a sweeping crest leading back from the top of the skull and framing the sides of the face. He stood up tall and his posture expressed admirable pride and resolve. Unusually for a Hylden he seemed to be wearing armour in the form of a large breastplate across his chest; styled and engraved to resemble a pair of goat horns curving up to either shoulder. One arm was raised up to chest height and his palm was open and standing in that palm was a round orb of some kind and he was looking at that jewel with a determined but sad expression.
Kain pondered at the image for a long moment before shaking his head and turning away to explore the rest of the chamber. Each side door did indeed lead off into another room, full of more of the alien machinery Malek must have made use of. They seemed to be supporting mechanisms for the largest one in the central room and the murals on the walls showed the machines being operated by Hylden engineers. He supposed it was supposed to be viewed as some kind of instruction but their precise order eluded him.
The presence of Hylden in these pictures however immediately roused his suspicions and he began to form a theory in his mind.
His hypothesis was drastically confirmed when he entered the furthest chamber and saw the massive picture that ran up the curved wall towards the ceiling.
.
“This second mural was of greater interest then a nobleman Hylden’s portrait, for it seemed to show the Bastion as having far greater significance then I had previously believed.”
.
Its lower half seemed to show a map and the landmass Kain recognised instantly as the coastline of Nosgoth, although there had been some changes in the depicted geography since the diagram had been drawn. Various locations on the map were marked with symbols that the vampire could not read. Some places he could identify, such as the forgotten fort in the ancient canyons, the location of the Device beneath the city of Meridian and even the Hylden city on an archipelago of islands off the coast.
Another location which drew his attention was this very mountain, its symbol engraved with darker colour. Lines from this symbol lanced up to the picture above the map, which to the vampire’s eye seemed to depict the mountain itself but cut away showing an elaborate labyrinthine interior.
.
“So Malek was not just a sadist but a thief as well, building his Bastion atop a Hylden Stronghold and then stealing their technology to bind his warrior’s souls? The Nexus Stone was a Hylden artefact; it had led me here to discover the hidden secrets Malek had tried to bury.”
.
Kain stared at the picture, looking at the mountain and wondering if this image was indeed correct and the castle interior merely a human construction atop a larger complex with secrets awaiting discovery.
.
“But the question still remained; ‘why?’”