The two wolves that bounded southward, passing out of the southern reaches of the forest and up into the flood plains below moved far quicker than any beast of the forest, racing alongside one another in a savage blur they covered much distance with ease. They stayed to the wild, avoiding the trodden paths and roads and staying clear whenever a party of vampire hunters came within sight.
Skirting the plains they travelled south until the terrain became rocky and dry and angled up onto a large rocky plateau overlooking the land. After this point the great canyons opened up like wounds in the earth itself.
The pair of wolves travelled on, pressing deeper into this unknown land. Here there was no rule of kings or earls or even men. The wild held dominion here and had always done so even with the petty encroachments of human and vampire alike.
At some point, the wolves came to a sudden stop in this long and uninterrupted journey. The one in the lead sniffed at the ground for a moment and then looked down over the edge of the cliff, down into the deep ravine below.
Something of a smile broke its lips and then it changed, shifting back into the crouched form of Vorador.
As the ancient vampire straightened and stood up, the second wolf changed as well. Kain flexed his shoulders to alleviate the feeling of displacement in his bones and came over to join Vorador’s side as they looked down into the canyon.
The twilight stars were just beginning to peek through the dark sky, the full moon sliding up on the horizon.
The origin of the Homunculi which had chosen to invade the estate back in the swamp had not been resolved.
Their arrival and attack had worried Kain. Mindless automatons like those creatures do not operate on their own. Some intelligence guided them remotely.
But who… and why?
Was it the  False God… or the Hylden? Or something new? It seemed that this game became more complex with each new development.
All he could do at this point was press on with his own quest and wait until he had more information.
There was the …’other’… matter as well that for the moment both  he and Vorador were staunchly avoiding in their discussions.
“Here.” Vorador said, pointing down with a talon into the canyon. Kain followed his haze, squinting.
“I see nothing.” He as eventually forced to admit.
“That is the beauty of this place.” The ancient vampire said.  “It was made as to be concealed from prying eyes, its presence hidden by the land itself.”
Kain narrowed his eyes sceptically at the ravine bellow. A thick grove of evergreens lined the floor, running up the sides of the rocky face whenever the terrain allowed it. The cliff itself was jagged, deep shadows formed by the irregular rocks.

“The southern canyons and ravines that stretched from the flood plain upon which was built the capital of Meridian to the far distant Lake of Serenity and Willendorf was a dry and dusty land, filled with jagged cliffs and deep dark gullies For the desperate merchant it might provide a quicker trade route between east and west. For bandits, it was a prime place to set up their ambushes.”

Kain glanced up along the canyon, seeing it stretch off all the way to the horizon. The canyons were like giant claw marks in the ground, carved into the plateau with inter connecting ravines, valleys and cliffs. Without a marked path for a guide it was entirely possible to keep wandering around these canyons forever.

“I had met the Seer here once before, at her rickety shack overlooking the great southern sea. But Vorador had not led me to that place but rather to where he assured me the Seer dwelt in this period. If she could provide me direction to the Tablets of Dark Fable then I would find her.”

Vorador slid down the side of the cliff, moving with an agility that rivalled Kain’s own as he bounded from rock to rock. Kain quickly followed, the two of them sliding down the sheer cliff wall. Soon they past into the line of trees, the thick pines casting dark shadows on the ground.
Kain observed Vorador as the ancient took the lead, his hand held out in front of him as he took note of little things on the ground that might mean a trail to him.
“I still don’t see anything.” He remarked, following Vorador up to a place where a thick clump of trees was clustered around the bottom of a large set of rocky columns that stretched all the way up to the canyon top.
Vorador looked them up and down and smiled.
“That’s because you’re not looking correctly.” He remarked and then sat down on a rock. “Now we wait.”
“Wait?” Kain asked impatiently. “After coming all this way?”
Vorador chuckled.
“It’s almost dark enough.” He said, looking up “Have patience and you’ll see.”
With a scowl Kain sat down and crossed his arms in front of his chest. And so the two of them sat in silence Vorador with his face raised to look at the sky and Kain sunk in sullen annoyance.
 
“If the seer was here, she would answer my questions. But there was some information Vorador could give me right now that I would certainly need.”
 
“Vorador…” He began and the older vampire turned to look at him. “What can you tell me about the beliefs of the ancestors?”
Vorador looked a bit confused.
“Beliefs?” He repeated with a twitch to his left ear.
“Their religion.” Kain clarified and Vorador rocked back on his seat in understanding, both ears erect in attention.
“You didn’t strike me as being particularly pious Kain, especially not for a belief system long since dead.” He said. “Why do you bring up that particular topic?”
Kain shrugged.
“Call it a scholarly interest.”
“You seem to have developed quite an uncharacteristic ‘scholarly interest’ since your fledgling days.” Vorador remarked, that statement made all the more true by the contrast of this era’s Kain who still expected Vorador to make for him an army. The ancient vampires tone was not overly disapproving however.
“I was never that interested in the faith of the ancients.” He said with a slump to his shoulders. “It struck me as being quite backwards for a culture as advanced as theirs.”
Kain nodded glumly in agreement. Of course he knew that the romanticised ideal of a perfectly noble, just and wholly decent people was a shame. No race was without their seedy underbelly, their mistakes and their misconceptions.
“And their god?” He asked, looking up at Vorador to study his expression. The elder vampire scowled then.
“You mean the Wheel of Fate.”
The Wheel of Fate; yes that had been what Raziel had called it, the cycle of destiny; birth, death and rebirth. As much as Kain understood, it was this cycle that allowed the False God to feed on the souls of the dead. To this end the False God had been the prime mover in this game, manipulating Vampire, Human and even Hylden as pawns to create death on a large enough scale throughout history to feed him.
“That’s dangerous Kain.” Vorador was saying. “When they were cursed by the Unspoken their faith in the reincarnation delivered by the Wheel caused them to commit suicide en-mass.”
Kain blinked and looked up.
“What?”
“They could not bare the new reality of immortality and its philosophical disconnection from their God. So strong was their belief and faith in such a divine system that separation was more than they could bear.”
Kain was left dumfounded for a moment.

“So it was not shunning of the light nor even the blood thirst that had driven my ancestors to self destruction, but rather the immortality itself. This had been what had so utterly devastated them. The Hylden’s curse had been poetically apt right down to the last detail.”

He sat there, working through implications of such a thing. The Hylden were to blame for the curse there was no doubt about that, but had the ancients not held to their dogmatic beliefs than more of them might have survived than just Janos Audron.

“Had Raziel known this? Had he, while under the thumb of the False God, discovered its ancient crime against our race? This knowledge only deepened my resolve. Somehow, someday… I would make that disgusting cephalopod pay for what he had done to my people.”

Vorador sighed and kicked at a rock near his feet, letting it roll in the dirt.
“One might ask of them why?” He said, asking the rhetorical question. “Why were they so loyal to the Wheel?”
The same question had occurred to Kain more than once after he had learned of his true enemy. They had been such an advanced culture with evidence left behind of advanced schools of philosophy and the sciences, an acute understanding of the nature of Mana and of course they were the creators of the Pillars themselves.
How could a race so wise and advanced be fooled like that?
“Religious indoctrination can dominate the mind of the unwary.” He was forced to conclude with a weary sigh.
Vorador considered this and tapped a talon against the side of his face.
“More to it than that I think.” He said. “I can only make a hypothesis in poor retrospect but I belief they were seduced by a promise of great rewards for service.”
Kain looked at him quizzically.
“Their mythology was full of demi-gods, mortal heroes who served the One God in their own way and were each in turn elevated above mortals and given arcane powers to command.” The elder vampire explained.
“That drove a lot of warriors during the ancient war to acts of zealot barbarism I think; the ideal that if they pleased their god enough he would grant them the same reward.” He added as an after thought, glancing up along the cliff again.
Kain supposed that made sense. After all, there would have to have been a grand reward promised for the old liar to have enlisted Moebius as his servant. Immortality and god like power.
So in the end, Moebius’ ideals deep down had never been about what he thought the right thing to do but rather came from a selfish desire for more power; power that not even his Guardianship of the Pillar of Time had given him.
Kain could not help but smile for he doubted that Moebius had earned such a reward. The delicious and humorous irony of Moebius being swallowed up by the Wheel of Fate he was so passionate in defending lifted Kain’s spirits.
Vorador suddenly stood up.
“It is time.” He said. “The light fades.”
Kain stood up as well and as he did so, something strange began to happen.

“As I watched, the shadows of the trees all around us seemed to culminate at a certain point, almost joining together. This combined darkness pulled back across the surface of the cliff and revealed what had been hidden there. The cliff had been styled into an optical illusion so that in the light, be it sunlight or moon, it hide from view the entrance of some ancient ruin.”

The cliff face itself warped the perception of those who looked upon it. The illusion was stunningly simple, objects and buildings placed just so as to use natural light to hide their presence. Even close up the illusion held strong, only to be banished by shadow.
As more and more of the ruin revealed itself, Kain’s expression turned awestruck. He glanced up, watching building after building become perceptible all the way up to the top of the cliff.
Had one not already known where this place was then it would have been impossible to stumble across it by accident.
As he watched his expression began to change, changing as his face creased itself into a frown.
There were no markings on these ruins like there were often to be found with those of the ancient vampires. The buildings were more rounded whereas the ancients preferred angular architecture.
What drew Kain’s immediate attention however were the two statues standing either side of the massive door leading into the interior of the cliff. They had no wings sprouting behind them, only two jagged growths out of the shoulder blades in their place. Their ears were quite large and angled up the side of the head and upon their brow they had a crest of bone.

“The architecture was not entirely foreign to me but I could tell that this was not crafted by the Ancient Vampires. This was the building work of the Hylden. Vorador had led me to one of the enemy race’s long abandoned settlements, a fortress built for war right into the cliff itself.”

“For the past two centuries, she has lived here.” Vorador said, gesturing up towards the door. “I have no guarantee if she still dwells but if you seek her, she most likely lies within.”