Standing atop the cliff, towering above the Forgotten Keep which the gathering light of the moon was hiding once more; Vorador stood to erect attention. His arm outstretched and perched upon it was a Raven, one of his many trained birds. Its sinister dark head was level with his ear and to him it whispered its report of distant goings on.
When finished, Vorador nodded once and held his arm higher. The bird let out its call out before taking to the air. When it was a short distance away it disappeared, fading away into a green haze.
Vorador stared after it for a short while before he turned and then looked back to face crack rocks behind him
“Ah there you are.” He began. Out of the shadows, Kain emerged looking grimly thoughtful but not disappointed. “I could not contact you before.”
“I was being entertained.” Kain mused, his eyes still distant as he approached.
The ancient vampire raised an eyebrow.
“Then you met the Seer?” He asked. Kain nodded.
“She gave me a starting point.”
Vorador sighed and shook his head, folding his arms.
“I still believe your chasing ghosts.” He declared in an unimpressed voice. Kain looked down once at the scroll he had tightly grasped in one hand.
“Ghosts sometimes have interesting things to say.” He opined. Vorador looked down at it contemplatively but then made a disgusted noise and turned away to look off towards the horizon.
“Then I wish you more luck than came to this Raziel of yours.”
There was a moment of silence.
“And you Vorador? Where will you go now?” Kain asked in a low tone. Vorador did not answer immediately but his eyes narrowed a bit and he set his jaw.
He drew in several breaths before his ears dropped a little.
“Twenty years ago Moebius’ crusade began to target vampire worshipers as well as our kind.” He began, launching into what seemed like an unrelated anecdote. “There was a family who was the most loyal supporting bloodline who revered me. They remained mine through the bloody era of the Sarafan and the Hunters both.”
Kain watched his face and was able to catch the momentary haunted look that crossed his face.
“Moebius came for them personally and then used them as examples of traitors. They were all burned alive save for one infant girl…. The only one of their bloodline I was in time to rescue.”
Then Kain understood.
“Umah?” He asked. Vorador tilted his head down, resting his chin on his breast and frowned.
“Perhaps you find it surprising that I put myself out over mere humans?” He asked. “I confess it was a moment of weakness.”
Kain was slightly taken aback by this display of openness.
“The Sarafan had murdered my sire and now Moebius’ cutthroats had taken every other vampires I called close kin. I could not bare the thought of having more of my own die, even if they were human. In that infant I saw personified the faces of all those I had lost.”
Kain had known Vorador had at once time being a sentimentalist, who attached great worth onto his close kin especially his Sire Janos Audron but he had never shown this side of him outside that closed in circle of confidants.
“Where do I go now you ask?” Vorador then asked abruptly, looking around at him. “I go east, to Willendorf and the city of the dying Lion. There I will recreate our people.”
“And if my younger self recruits from them an army?” At this question Vorador actually smiled.
“What will be will be.” He said in an actually resigned tone of voice. “He may be a rash, power drunk fledgling but seeing the being he will mature into gives me renewed faith in his ability.”
Then he turned his back fully, facing the distant valleys of Eastern Nosgoth.
“Goodbye Kain. Rest assured I will be watching him for the tell tale sighs of evolution that will produce the being that saved my daughter.”
There was a shimmer and the Ancient vampire changed, assuming the guise of the wolf. With swift bounds he vaulted forward, racing down into the canyons and taking the first steps on his own journey.
Kain watched him go, before with stern resolution turning himself to look towards the distant mountains of the north.

“As Vorador left I forced my mind blank, refusing to think any more than necessary. Vorador praised me now but before long he would be cursing me with every fibre of his being. Leaving him to his fate, I turned my attention to my own.”

His own body shimmered and then broke apart, his very substance becoming a swarm of bats that each in turn flew into the air and soared high into the night.
Across the length of Nosgoth they soared flying far and fast, swift in the darkness. They soared over the dying forests leaving them behind. The great southern lake and the stronghold faded on the horizon. Over the burned out corpse of Avernus the bats flew, paying no heed to the demons still prowling its streets and who growled up futility that the swarm passing overhead.
The nestled village of Uschtenhim was barely noticed, hidden in a rocky valley before the mountains were flying below. Directly to the north were the ruins of Janos Audron’s eyrie but from here the bats turned west, flying along the ridgeline of the mountains and then down before the mouth of a small and almost insignificant cave.
There the bats came together once more and Kain solidified, dropping down into the near knee high snow of the mountains.
Before him was the entrance to an elaborate labyrinth, a long and twisting network of caves.
This hidden grotto was the romanticized lair of the Oracle of Nosgoth, a place where those seeking to know the future would brace the traps and the dark to seek out the Soothsayer for advice.
This ideal however was little more than a cruel joke, perpetrated by Moebius the Time Streamer.
Even beyond his deception however, beyond the Oracle Caves’ ultimate secret. Kain made his way into the darkness, knowing precisely where to go. The twisting length of these tunnels was no impediment to him.
The Oracle cave itself was little more than a round room carved in arcane murals, with a suspended pot hung in the directly in the centre.
Catching the pot with one hand, Kain pulled it sharply to one side.
There was a loud grating noise and slowly, the walls of the chamber peeled back, revealing what lay beyond, the extended and far more complex system of machines and clockwork that made the most powerful Time Streaming chamber in Nosgoth.

“The ancient Chronoplast chamber, the most powerful of the time streaming chambers. With this chamber in his possession Moebius had had the power to manipulate history to his own twisted designs.”

Entering the main chamber, Kain observed its status. The ancient machine was of course still intact and operational.  A pit with curving smooth stone walls, interlaid with brass clockwork and pale glowing violet crystal.
Brass holdings with simple golden lights illuminated the chamber at every one of its three levels.
Laid into the floor of the chamber was the curved figure eight of eternity that Moebius used as his emblem and indentifying icon.
Directly above was the armillary like construction that served a conduit for the Chloroplast’s energies, directing it to the curved in porthole at the far end of the room. This sustained hole in space and time was like a blue vortex, emitting a low whining sound as if reality itself was protesting the rip. The roof of the chamber was a large crystalline dome through which the stars, representing the fates of all beings and the armillary constantly followed the stars to track them.
There were essentially three types of time streaming devices. The first were portable devices that could only deliver the user through time a limited amount of years and could only be used once, crumbling into dust upon the strain of use.
The second were larger machines Moebius had once had built into the Sarafan stronghold. These had far longer range in time than the portable devices but were limited to the space within their own chambers.
For the Chronoplast, there were no limits. If one knew how to use it properly and had the correct settings, it could deliver the user to any place and any time.

“Now this chamber served my far more noble purpose. Armed with the Seer’s scroll, I proceeded to alter the ancient machines controls. I had spent centuries of trail and error studying this device and the era I seemed to be attuning it to be thousands of years in the past. I had no guarantee that the Seer’s information was accurate or even that she was telling the truth but still this was my best chance to fulfil my destiny.”

The Chronoplast’s controls were clock work, the dials and levers moving the machine that was a welding of both science and sorcery. As each setting from the scroll was put in place, the machinery above responded in kind, turning around itself and gathering energy with an audible hum. The armillary churned above, parts of its structure hovering in orbit around the main whole. Bolts of energy began to travel along its length, zapping back and forth from the rim to the large circular centre which glowed increasingly brighter.
When Kain threw the last switch, inputting the last of the Seer’s settings the machine reached its climax. The built up temporal energy shot forth from the armillary and connected with the porthole. The gateway in time absorbed the energy and its blue haze burst forth from itself, hovered in mid air and then turned bright white. The porthole reabsorbed the envy pulling it back in to re-devour it. As it swallowed the energy it carved in upon itself becoming a stable hole punched through time and space.
Ascending the stairs Kain paused to stare down the throat of time itself

“Not for the first time I stood on the Chronoplast’s threshold and faced with the unknown I hesitated. This momentary lapse was soon corrected and I marched forward to meet my destiny.”

One step, a met foot of distance, to cross thousands of years of time. The impact of such huge step was a powerful shockwave of a sensation that caused Kain to feel unbearably stretched. As if one foot was in the present and the other on the far side of history. Then he felt himself soaring, flying past countless people as they lived and died in the blink of an eye.
The light of the vortex was blinding but Kain could impressions, fleeting half images of events in history. He thought he perceived the crowning of King Ottmar and then his own birth. Ariel’s murder at the hands of a possessed Mortanius.
Then he was almost convinced he saw Vorador stabbing the previous Balance Guardian before Ariel in the back and then turned his wrath on the others.
Janos Audron’s death in Raziel’s arms.
The rising Banners of the original Sarafan Order.
And then…
Kain gasped out load he emerged from the vortex. He stumbled to the ground that came up to meet him, feeling the lush green grass beneath him.
Slowly he straightened up and observed the leaden grey sky above that hid the sun. Thick droplets of rain pounded down on a damp ground.

“The air around me was purer, the ground under my feet alive with energy. There was no question that I was in the past, but was I in the era I sought? This remained unanswered.”

Kain looked around, observing this new place. Thick trees of pine and other evergreens lined the side of steeps hills to the north and a river cascaded down a jagged cliff to move down through their valley, swollen with the rain.
To the west rose large mountain peeks that he only vaguely recognised as Nosgoth’s curved western mountain range.
To the south was a far more welcome view, even through the haze of the rain.

“From this vantage point a welcome sight met me, one I would never tire of seeing. The Pillars of Nosgoth standing erect and pure, piercing the earth and the sky. The sight gave me strength but that was not all there was to see in this panorama.”

Glancing past the pillars he saw to the west the Lake of Tears, the largest Lake in Nosgoth on the verge of an inland sea. There his eyes rested, staring at what lay there for him to behold.

“Beyond the pillars, to the west, stood the visible outline of the Citadel of Tears; the ancient citadel of my ancestors. Unblemished by time and standing whole.”aliation they had cursed me to forever bare the knowledge that I had killed yet another one of my own.”