Kain found that, this time, he could not fully recover. His strength simply would not return to its normal level and was in fact bleeding out of him.  Coldness was spreading through him from the centre of his chest and moving outwards. He felt like he was dying.
.
“My situation was grave. I had not recovered from this last attack; my body seemed to be leaking strength like a rusty bucket its water. I was out of time. With no means of restoring my energies I estimated I had perhaps two hours before my condition became fatal.”
.
His telekinesis powers seemed weaker as well, along with a great deal of his other magical abilities, becoming flimsy and tenuous. That was fatal right now, as the Hylden possessed armours began to flood out from the underground ruins, amassed as a horde of jittering insane automatons. Driven beyond reason they were destroying everything in their path. Their vandalism was indiscriminate. They tore down the murals of their own underground ruins and despoiled the records left there, racing up into the Bastion itself to wreck and ruin anything the elements had left standing in the abandoned castle.
Kain was near powerless to stop them. His own power was flowing away and he was forced to run to escape their overwhelming numbers.
.
“Was this to be my end then? To bleed out my life in some dank hole under the Paladin’s castle? Unacceptable.”
.
Desperation was like fire in his views, burning through him like a poison but one that battled the encouraging weak numbness and kept him moving. He knew that below, with the Nexus Stone still unlocked, more souls would keep escaping from within to possess the armours Malek had thoughtlessly left behind. Soon the horde would be an unstoppable force that might very easily become a threat to Nosgoth itself.
Coming around a corner, Kain found himself in a secluded anti chamber along the Bastion’s eastern most wall. It was far enough from the hordes present destructive pass that it was safe at least for the moment.
Two figures were huddled there, looking exhausted. The nearest in his naked human form was the Lycanthrope emissary Ewoden. Hs arms were coated in cuts and gashes up to the shoulders where he had attempted to defend himself against as a multitude and he was bleeding. The second was the old man Ezekiel, his own arm clutched to his side from where he had taken a slash from a blade. Seeing him, Kain’s nostrils flared and he with a growl started into the chamber with steadfast and furious resolve. 
“You!” He barked and the old man looked up. Kain grabbed him by his cloak and hauled him roughly to his feet, forcing him to be at eye level. Ezekiel’s face was a pale white from excursions and his own fragility. “Speak old man!” He demanded; his talons grip like iron despite his current state.
Staring into the elder humans face he could still remember, quite vividly and painfully, what had happened. When the Hylden in its armour body had attacked Ezekiel, Kain had felt the wound in his own arm. That he triggered this rapid decline of his health.
“Who are you?!” He asked, his tone resonating with a savage undertone. “What are you?!”
Ewoden grabbed the vampire by the shoulder and pulled him back roughly, forcing the two of them apart. Ezekiel staggered back against the side of the wall, gasping for air. Kain glared down at the lycanthrope and he stared back in turn, just as furious.
“You don’t have the privilege to ask!” Ewoden said to him with something like contempt in his voice, lips pulled back to reveal his canines. “You deserted us! Left us to die!”
Kain snarled back and slapped the emissaries hand away.
“I was forced to retreat!” He said and then shivered in annoyance for trying to make excuses without meaning to. He took an angry step forward. “I don’t need to justify myself to you, Lycanthrope.” He said, jabbing a talon up and waving it in Ewoden’s face. “You or anyone else!”
Ezekiel had managed to recover some composure; he straightened and looked the vampire full in the face without fear.
“Yes that’s always your way hasn’t it, Kain?” He asked in a cold stone he had never heard the old man use before. The now undeniable facade of the eccentric old mountain man had fallen away and he was grim and steady in his voice. “A law unto yourself, accountable to no one.”
Kain stared him down before he pushed Ewoden aside and started towards the old man again, every suspicion confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt.
“And there is the truth.” The vampire said in a deliberately flat voice. “You’re not just some eccentric old man are you?” He didn’t touch him but rather glared at him with some force.  “After all I don’t recall ever telling you my name.”
One side of the old man’s cheek twitched as he seemed to realise his slip. His lips tightened and he narrowed his eyes.
“It’s just as I told you.” He said defensively. “I’m old and I’ve come here to die.” Kain was in more than the right mood to make his wise an immediate, painful and bloody reality. He reached up and grabbed his cloak in both hands, arms trembling with anger barely kept in check.
 “You think I have any scruples about eviscerating an old man?” He asked in a slow voice. “I ought to beat the truth out of you!”
His frustrations and desperations came out of him in an unguarded rush and before he even realised what he was saying he demanded of the old man; “Who are you and what is happening to me?!” The question hung in the air, echoing down the corridors leading out from either side.
Kain was furious but more with himself for letting his emotions get the better of his judgement and forcing him to expose his anxieties in such a manner... and to a human no less! Snarling he pushed Ezekiel back against the wall and out of the way.
“Stay here and rot the both of you!” He spat and stormed off without looking back, too angry and frustrated to even care what Ezekiel might have to say even if he did choose to speak.
.
“The walk did my ire some good, allowing my temper to settle. If nothing else the anger had given me back some of my energy, vital at this point. But me dilemma remained. The Bastion was quickly filling up with lethal forces from the unlocked Nexus Stone and I was on a terribly short lifeline. I did not wish to admit I, even to myself, but I was scared.”
“I had faced the possibility of death more than once, but this was different. It was like living on a deadline and knowing the expiration date of my very life.”
.
The horde was spreading, the ethereal glow from inside their warped armour seen around every corner almost and their insane jabbering echoed like an unending song of madness. It would not be long now before they found their way outside. That left Kain with a big of a dilemma. These creatures were not present in the future timeline which means this potential incursion was stopped and most likely by him. But he did not see how he could do any of that in his present condition.
The way his body was falling apart he suspected he was no longer a match for even five of them.
So when one of them lumbered into the passage to block his path, the vampire was not optimistic of his changes as he was certain it would summon more down on top of them.
The armour however made no sound of alarm or call for its fellows. Instead it approached him, slowly and in as non threatening a posture as possible. As it drew nearer, the saw that the armour was battered and sliced in many places as if a crowd had taken maces to it and applied them with vigour. The neon sickly yellowish green of the spirit inside the armour illuminated the stone around it.
“Well Kain.”  It began, sounding wearily jubilant and the vampire instantly recognised the voice albeit it somewhat weakened. “Despite the cataclysmic interruption, we might have our conversation after all.”
It stopped several feet away from him and came no further. From here Kain could see that part of its shoulder pauldron had been so badly cut that the left arm was in danger of falling off, hanging loose.
“Ashar?” He asked for he knew the voice of the Hylden king who had lost control of the Nexus Stone’s power from within.
“Yes, it is I.” The armour nodded in confirmation and raised its good hand. Ashar flexed the gauntlet as if testing its suppleness. “This body is an agony of suspended, inert senses but it is nothing if not durable.”
He seemed then to catch Kain’s stern glower and he lowered his hand back down to his side.
“But I see I am need of providing you with explanations.” He admitted. Kain snorted derisively in response, his already irritated temper probed some more.
“More then that I should think.” He said. “I want to know what’s going on, no half truths or riddle games, not this time.” Before he might have indulged the fancy word play and hidden meaning concealed in the words but he was low on time and patience. Ashar seemed to sense this and his helm nodded, metal rubbing against metal with a screech.
“Very well.” He said. There was a pause as if thinking where to start and then he began to speak without Kain having to prompt him again. “The Nexus Stone was created at the beginning of the war, during the time when the fighting was most brutal and savage.”
Kain said nothing letting him tell his story but every ounce of him straining to hear it as these might be the answered he needs to survive this ordeal.
“My people had discovered immortality through our means of binding ourselves to the energies native to the demon dimension.” Ashar began. “We had discovered the true nature of the afterlife and the Wheel of Fate so our deaths were unacceptable. To that end the Nexus Stone was forged, a gemstone made from the combined essences of myself and my entire court.”
The vampire considered this, remembering the vision of a swirling vortex of souls he had glimpsed while jumping from Fanum-Divus back to Nosgoth. Could that have been the ancient spirits of long dead Hylden nobility?
“So you and your court have been inside that stone all along?” He asked. Ashar leaned his new body back. His face was merely the visor of a helmet and so he had no facial expressions but his body language suggested amusement.
“Oh much more than that Kain.” He said in a low tone. The vampire raised an eyebrow at him questioningly. Ashar gestured down, indicating the ruins below the bastion and the multitude of unleashed souls still there. “Unless a Hylden’s soul is devoured by something else, like the Reaver for instance, the souls of my people will be drawn inside.”
At first Kain did not fully comprehend what he was saying, his face a mix of confusion and puzzlement. The pieces of it were already falling into place in his mind when Ashar added; “In short Kain, the Nexus Stone contains the souls of very nearly every Hylden ever to die.”
The vampire stood there, stuck dumb.  He only vaguely seemed to absorb what the possessed armour said next.
“The Stone’s powers are so great that if a being of any race were to die in its presence their soul would be drawn inside as well.”
Kain shook his head and ran a hand over his face, trying to clear his mind so it could absorb and process from the enormity of it all.
“The ancient wars...” He began quietly as if to himself. “Lasted for a thousand years...”
Ashar nodded.
“And millions on either side died during that time.”
That was another giant concept to take in. If what Ashar seemed to be suggesting was true then it made the Nexus stone far more important than he had ever realised. In fact the stone might very well be the most powerful artefact in Nosgoth.
“Millions...” He repeated, trying to get his head around the idea of that many souls being squeezed into a stone no bigger than his palm.
“I gathered their spirits, their energy, for a purpose.” Ashar said and his tone suddenly seemed urgent. He took a step forward, his manner imploring. “But I have to know what that purpose is and you have my instructions!”
Kain was still barely out of an awed daze.
“I don’t have anything for you.” He said a little lamely.
“Yes you do!” The Hylden king insisted intensely. “You absorbed them as was intended and have them safely stored inside you even as we speak!”
Kain looked up at him with fresh bafflement.
“You speak in riddles.” He stated. “What have I...”
.
“A flash of memory... realization...”
.
Indeed he had absorbed something, long ago it seemed now. One by one he had sought the four of them out and when he had touched them they had broken apart and been drawn into his body as if they were a part of his very being. One of these relics had even granted him invulnerability to waters touch.
“The Tables of Dark Fable.” He breathed, suddenly coming back to himself with the realization. Ashar seemed jubilant that he understood.
“There was no other way Ba’al could get the information to me.” He explained, taking another step forward. “By the time he wrote the prophecy I was already dead and my soul entrapped within the stone.” By now he was within arm’s reach and he held out a hand to the vampire. “He had to use you as a go between. Please, let me extract the information from your body.” His hand was slowly approaching Kain’s chest.  “It is vital...”
Kain didn’t let him finish. He slapped his gauntlet away with a snarl. Ashar looked up at him and then took a hesitant step backwards.
“Keep your distance!” He spat, taking a step away from the Hylden king. Indignation and resentful anger flowing through him from deep inside, vampire could feel his energies build fuelled by his frustrations. Ashar, despite the lack of facial expressions, looked taken aback by his fury.
“If what you say is true and I have been used as a puppet to come here for your benefit then I see no reason to trust you.” He snapped. “You or Ba’al Zebur anymore.”
Despite his better instincts he had blindly followed the Stone’s direction to come to this place and place him in this nightmare when he ought to have sought a means of preserving himself against the encroaching death he felt near.  After his experiences with Moebius he was furious with himself for not knowing better.
“Everything we have done...” Ashar started defensively. “And I must finish is for your benefit, not our own.”
Kain remained silent in immovable.
“How may I convince you that we stand as allies at your side, Scion?” The hylden king asked, sounding a little exasperated. Again Kain did not reply and the silent between them dragged on. Then the soul in the armour tilted its metal body back and swayed.
“If you wish to retrieve the Nexus Stone, there is another way into the forging chamber.” He said slowly and Kain narrowed his eyes.
“What?”
“A secondary entrance, bypassing the deranged horde that my followers have become.”
The vampire paused, letting the silence linger again for perhaps a minute before he asked;
“And you will show me this entrance?”
Ashar nodded.
“If it will earn your trust then yes.” He said and stepped to one side, gesturing for Kain to follow him. “You may enter and close the stone so no more souls within are wasted.”
While the horde was a threat that needed to be quashed and quickly, the way Ashar had put it sat very oddly in his mind.
“Wasted?” The vampire repeated slowly.
“You did not think I went to all that excruciating trouble just to create an alternative hell for my people did you?” Ashar asked in return and now his tone was bitter, self condemning and grim. “Existence inside the stone is no better than the Wheel of Fate, perhaps worse. Their energy has a purpose, a purpose that coincides with your own agenda. You will need that power to prevail.”