A few feet down beyond the doorway, the passage was engulfed in absolute darkness. As they walked Kain held out his hand and summoned to him a small floating wisp of pulsing magic light that illuminated the path before them.
The stairs led down and down, turning abruptly at ninety degree angles every fifty feet or so and always to the left.
Kain had the feeling they were walking in a descending square, travelling around a rectangular pillar of stone as they descended.
The winding stair seemed to go on some distance and gradually the corridor widened out, the ceiling rising up high and out of the range of his light source. Then the stairs stopped and they found themselves standing upon a flat metallic surface, tightly tiled with rivets in the corners of each one. There was nothing but the sense of a cavernous space beyond the meagre range of the light. Beside him, Ewoden sniffed in all directions but frowned and said nothing apparently not picking up any scent worth mentioning.
There was the obvious smell of metal from all around, thick with rust and left a irritable taste in the mouth.
Clenching a fist Kain summoned as much light as he could, forcing the radius of his spell to expand out revealing more and more of the cavern.
Slowly the shadows gave up their secrets, a huge expanse revealed to their eyes. High above them was a huge ceiling, curved and perfectly smooth made of the same tiled material upon which they stood.
The floor ended a short distance away, cut off from a deep drop into a black abyss by a buttress of metal.
Kain slowly craned his head up as the looming visage widened, revealing to him a massive face set in metal; standing all and proud with one hand raised to support the ceiling. The statue was colossal, its head perhaps as wide as the base of the Pillars themselves with a crest that swept back over the skull and into the darkness.
The statue depicted the same Hylden nobleman he had been throughout the hidden ruins, he was unmistakable by now and with this monumental depiction clearly an individual of importance.  The colossus, which had perhaps once been made of a shining metal, was spotted with large patched of red rust which had eaten through into the scaffolding ridden interior.
The face was strangely untouched however and its eyes, made from a paled glass, seemed to follow the two intruders to this place inexorably with its gaze.
Coming over to the edge, Kain held out his hand with its magical glow and looked down. The light did not penetrate the gloom of that abyss but judging by the size of the statue and the echo the sound of his footsteps made, he judged it not be more than a hundred feet or so down to a floor.
But even that was a goodly way down.
To his left there was a curve ramp leading down into the abyss, a walkway armed on either side to make it more like a suspended corridor of metal. Kain had seen similar architecture before, in the ancient device which had lain beneath the city of Meridian.
He stepped onto it, testing it for stability with one foot before he carried on. It was quite likely there would be places were once sound structures would fall apart for lack of maintenance.
Ewoden came up behind him, pausing with even more distrust at the walkway, it being so alien to him that he only carried on with Kain’s example before him.
Together the two of them went down, following the curving path. It went on for some distance, encircling the statue going down and down. By the use of the magical light Kain saw that the walls of the pit were circular and had many corridors leading off from them; each one marked by a sign with a  set of runes he could not read.
The walls between them were not bare, either carrying a pipe that wound back and forth like a coiled snake or an elaborate mechanical arm that ended in an insect like pincer, these running on rails to allow them to move up and down the wall.
As they approached the floor, Kain saw that this was not fully clear either. Around the arched feet of the Hylden statue were holes, perhaps about a foot across and arranged in a crescent circle. Stuck halfway in through several were glass tubs about the height of a man’s chest and as wide. They had long since cracked open and their contents were gone, covered in dust.
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“It was now beyond all doubt that the Hylden had once called this mountain stronghold home, for before me sprawled a deep labyrinthine complex of alien machines whose function I could not guess at.”
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Something however caught his eye, hidden behind the curve of the statue’s leg on the far side. Walking a short distance to investigate, he found a collection of metal tables that seemed quite out of place amongst this strange equipment in this place. These tables looked more modern, despite the layer of dust covering them.
Tarnished brass candlesticks stood in various places, the wax long since concealed into a lumpy substance running down the shaft to the table. There were many of them, evidence that someone had once spent a great deal of time here.
As he approached, he saw that there were about three tables and they were all covered in parchment sheets and books, pilled upon one another. Some of these had spilled off onto the floor, others were rolled up and some had been pinned down by an antique looking, but still more modern, goblet.
Coming over, the vampire brushed away the dust covering the papers. The ink upon them had faded with age but was just about legible.
Some were sketches of that Kain supposed to be of the machinery around them, annotated by notes in a spidery hand of what the artists supposed each part was for. Others contained diagrams that escaped him completely and seemed to be the product of a delirious mind, the handwriting wobbly and hard to make out as if written in a frenzy.
The overall intent seemed clear to the vampire, as he looked through the parchments one by one, however. An effort had been deliberately made by someone to try to understand and replicate Hylden technology and scientific thought.
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“And here too was more evidence of Malek’s plagiarism.”
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Then he came across a bundle of parchment sheets buried underneath a stack of papers, bound together with twine. It seemed to be a makeshift journal of some sort, full of day to day notes and progress reports.
This he picked up, holding it gingerly for it looked quite fragile. As his eyes canned the material before him, a dawning suspicion began to grow in his mind for the words were written by someone whose life story he was very familiar with.
The writer of this journal made frequent references to ‘the prophecy’ and the ‘redemption’. Redemption featured quite heavily in the text, a central theme that the writer went on and on about to the point of nausea. 
But in one passage the writer broke off from his description of Hylden science into a non sequitur phrase, where he referred to himself as ‘the broken necromancer’.
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“But not just his either, for the signature upon these research notes was that of the Guardian of Death, Mortanious; the very man who had changed me into a vampire. Had all his supposed magic come from Hylden technology, stolen from this hidden fortress?”
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Kain began to quickly life back through everything else on the table, viewed now in the context of Mortanious’ work it began to become clear. Kain knew his creators personality well and now these notes made sense to his mind, even if he did not understand the specifics.
What had the necromancer expected to learn in this place? And why had Malek even granted him access, when he had gone to so much trouble to hide the mountains secrets? Judging by the now antique state of this work station Kain guessed that this place hadn’t been visited since the Necromancer’s death, which in this time has been over a century ago.
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“Just what did this all portend?”
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On an impulse, Kain flipped through the necromancers old notes one last time looking for a specific thing. Eventually he found it, a large diagram of the Nexus Stone sketched in charcoal and very lifelike.
Although Kain wasn’t entire sure if he was unnerved or reassured by this.
“The air down here is bad.” Ewoden said, looking over at the side corridors leading off from this main chamber. 
Kain put down the papers and sniffed himself. Sure enough, now that his attention was drawn to it, he could smell the scent of trapped air beginning to move. This cavern must have been shut off since the necromancer’s untimely end. 
“We’ll let it circle for a while to be rid of any old gases.” The vampire said, judging the breeze coming down through the way they had come to be enough to clear the tunnels enough for them.
The lycanthrope emissary looked around at their surroundings with puzzled interest.
“What is this place?” He asked in a low tone, his voice carrying a faint metallic echo. Kain, placing the notes out of his mind, turned to regard them with him.
“Ruins left by an ancient race known as the Hylden.” He said.
Ewoden’s eyes widened and he turned his head sharply to look at the vampire.
“The race of Ambraxas?” He asked and there was a note of contempt and distain in his voice, the corners of his lips pulling back into the beginnings of a snarl. Having understood some of the emissaries antagonism against the one responsible for the tortuous creation of his breed, Kain perceived the beginning of a prejudice against the Hylden.
Perhaps it was not an unwarranted resentment for it had been their science that allowed Ambraxas’ experiments, but Kain frowned at the brewing racial distaste. It was a foolish sort preoccupation that tended to distract one from genuine threats. 
“They are ... a misunderstood people.” He said, choosing his words carefully. “Be careful not to paint them all with a single brush.”
The reminder of how humans viewed his own species was a subtle enough hint to make the Lycanthrope bristle and his lips relaxed back over his teeth, although his eyes were still dark and troubled.
It was perhaps another half an hour before the tangy smell of trapped gas had diminished enough to the point where Kain felt it safe to explore onwards.
Determining their path from this point onwards was not difficult. Even if he could not ready the ancient and dead language that denoted each passageway, he judged that one particular corridor to be more important than the others as its entranced was more elaborately decorated with intertwining pillars of rusted metal.
Keeping the orb of magical light floating above his palm, Kain took the lead slowly letting the light push the shadows away before proceeding. He had the uncomfortable sensation of walking into a room full of creatures, invisible to the senses but malevolent in their silent watching.
When they came to their first mural, Kain almost didn’t recognise it from any other stretch of wall before he was fully upon it. The image stretched up high above and Kain had to raise his hand to let the light illuminate it all.
Whereas the murals in the ruins of the ancient vampires tended to be stories and histories in pictographic form the Hylden used them for quite another purpose. These seemed to be blueprints of some kind or hypothetical designs, for what looked like an artificial person.
The thing depicted had arms and legs but was far taller and stouter then any human or vampire Kain had ever seen and there were notes in the same glyph writing along either side, annotations to explain each part.
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“I could not hope to understand the fruits of their scientific research, even if it had not been written in a language I could understand. But this diagram seemed particularly intriguing.”
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But was what interesting was that amongst these notes were various symbols that he did recognise, having them seem more than once in Vampiric ruins and even shown by Ajatar Cadre to him. Carved with some care was the ancient vampire symbol for the element of fire.
What a vampire symbol was doing in a buried Hylden ruin Kain could not say but it did raise some interesting questions.
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“Just what kind of technology had they been pushing to develop in such a place?”
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A crumbling but large side door led off from the main corridor, so rusty that large holes had opened all over it. When Kain pressed a hand to the thing it crumbled, the hinges disintegrated at the slightest stress and causing the door to fall inwards with a loud clatter.
The room beyond was an amphitheatre, raised dais all facing inward towards a central lower platform where a podium was raised.
A meeting chamber... or school perhaps?
No, the giant diagram at the back of the chamber with its complex details and annotated markings dissuaded him of that notion. It was far too complex for anyone but its creators to understand and add to. This was a room reserved for study and scientific conversation about this one subject.
The picture before him, as he walked down a metallic rail that clanked with each step, seemed to be an advanced form of diagram, showing images of Hylden standing in a row. There were about ten of them and the one in the middle of their row was taller than the others and seemed to have that same head crest that the statue of the nobleman had.
Directly below them was a visage of slathering, entwined tentacles covered in eyes that seemed to be reaching up towards them as if trying to grasp prey. Kain could never forget the image of the False God, his true enemy and knew it instantly for what it was.
These Hylden ignored the danger below and were all reaching up high above their heads imploringly . Out of their mouths and eyes a wispy spirit like form was rising, ghostly figures that emerged together into one whole entity.
This mass of wispy forms was drawn together even higher above and then drawn together and then condensed up into some type of round object surrounded by the shape of a skull... Kain paused and looked at the small pin prick on the design more closely.
Yes indeed... no doubt about it, the Nexus Stone. The image seemed to suggest that the Stone was formed out of the souls of Hylden.
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“This mural left no room for doubt. The Nexus Stone was indeed a Hylden artefact and it seemed a relic of some importance to them.”
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He took a step forward and in that single step, his chest pulsed and burned; numbness spreading out like a forest fire from his left hand side. The attack came far swifter this time then ever before, penetrating him right down to his bones in a matter of seconds.
The whips of light he was using began to falter as he collapsed to one knee; his free hand grasping his chest.
“N..no not now!” He gasped, struggling to breath.
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“The throbbing painful weakness was upon me again, even worse than before.  I felt my body sway and my mind ebb as if being bleed. Desperately I fought against it but to no avail.”
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Ewoden as at his side, trying to help him up but it was no use. His vision swam and senses retreated, pulling back from him as a surging powerful darkness reached out and plucked him up as easily as he might pick out a hen from a hen house.