Fires raged all around the Citadel, blocks of stone tumbling down as their supports crumbled into ash. Scream and shrieks echoed through the hallways and corridors of this falling city. The attack had been relentless and ruthless, a constant barrage of fire into the defences of the Citadel to weaken the garrison. Then the humans unleashed their pets. Moebius’ mutations, the werewolves, stormed the city walls and entered through any crack and crevice they would find.
Like maggots infesting an apple they wormed their way in and began to literally eat away from the inside.

“Feral as these beings were, they did their job well. Ravening through the city ahead of their masters they killed all in their path, rejoicing in a savage orgy of blood and chaos. They would soon discover that they had nothing on me.”

Kain’s bats came together in the air and reassuming his true form, Kain dropped down into the middle of the chaos. The Reaver was instantly in his grip even before his feet touched the ground.
Raziel’s spirit screamed its song of hunger as the blade sank down into the body of one of the feral beasts, carving it down the middle from the shoulder to the crotch. Blood of the mutation spurted out all over the ground before it fell down in a crumbled heap.
The occupants of the Citadel had reached their final hour. The inevitable march of history would this night render this once splendid castle a ruin evermore.
There was a snarl from behind him and Kain whipped around to see a pair of werewolves perched atop a roof, claws drawn back and mouths agape, drooling hot saliva.
One of them leaped, his arms arching down to shred and tear.
Kain sliced up across the beast’s path and the Reaver struck true, carving the creatures head and arms off in one swipe. The twitching pieces fell with a thump at the vampire’s feet.
The other prowled the rooftop for a while, watching Kain and waiting for a good opportunity to attack.
When it finally did launch itself, it left itself open to an attack from the air. Ajatar came down on it from above, landing with the precision of a bird of prey. She slammed the creature into the ground with her bodyweight and then her two sword blades came down sharply impaling the monster’s heart and lungs in one stab.
Kain did not wait for her to finish dispatching the creature. He busied himself in studying the layout of the Citadel. From the images the Tablet had shown him roughly where the forge was located but in these changing circumstances he could not be sure that it would remain unmolested for long.
“You are Vampire aren’t you?” Ajatar suddenly asked, without even looking up from her kill. Kain did not immediately answer nor did he turn around, he simply set his features into a deep frown.
“I’ve never seen such a…. an advanced hybrid as you.” She carried on, almost as if she were trying to find some other topic than the state of affairs in this chaos. “Did Janos sire you?”
Kain raised his hand to drape lightly over the left hand side of his chest, where before Janos Audron’s heart… the heart of Darkness… had been without him ever suspecting. The stillness there still disturbed him.
“Indirectly.” He admitted. There was a sudden far off howl and he swung the Reaver up to eye level with his muscles tensed. “Keep on your guard if you want to survive.”
Bodies filled the streets, human and fledglings for the most part; all of them cut down by the vicious attacks of the wolves. Blood ran through the corridors to stream into the lake like waterfalls.
It would not be long before the seraphim launched their own invasion and once they did the Citadel was lost forever.
“Where are you going?” She asked him, but following close behind none the less.
“There is an item here I need to recover.” He told her, even as flashes of memory from the Tablet told me that he was getting closer.
“But the city?!” Ajatar began, gesturing all around at the carnage. Kain was about to reply but suddenly a pack of werewolves came skittering around the corner, barking and yapping at them. The entire group galloped straight towards them.
Ajatar reacted first, both hands thrust up in front of each other. No weapons were needed for that great a range as she summoned for the Serioli discipline of air. The space around them contracted and then snapped out like a whip, the shockwave slamming into the charging wolves and knocking them down faltering their charge.
Kain acted swiftly, charging into their midst with the Reaver. The blade fed well once more, drinking their twisted souls down over and over.
Kain kicked a corpse aside before slamming his fist into the head of another, crushing its skull and letting the brain seep out between his talons.
When these creatures were all dead, he straightened and casually whipped the Reaver clean on the fur of the nearest body.
The Serioli were weakened due to the long decline of the Ancients and even now their prowess in battle was waning. Before long all the original vampires of their order would be gone, replaced by the fledglings that even then would fade or be forcibly removed in favour of humans.
This city was dying in one final turmoil of fire and its fall marked the end of the Ancient world.
“Any solider with even the most rudimentary understanding of the realities of battle would realise that this city is lost.” He said.
Ajatar merely stood there, face contorted with the attempted rejection of that ominous truth. Ajatar was a good commander but her sentimentally clearly impaired her judgement. The Serioli would be of no benefit here. Their presence here in an already defeated garrison would do nothing beyond add to the casualty list.
“But there is still a chance to avert the extinction of our species but it lies not with confronting Moebius’ dogs.” He told her.
The grandmaster looked up at him in confusion.
“Vorador has a tablet of Dark Fable does he not?” He asked bluntly. Ajatar paled slightly then nodded limply.
“Yes…” She said. “I told him to conceal it from everyone.”
“And he did… in his forge.”
Her eyes widened.
“What? Here?!” She asked incredulously. “What he thinking of? The tablet… the prophecy! Moebius must not have it!” Her vehemence made Kain smile.
She could be useful to him if properly guided but the title of ‘ally’ had been reserved in his mind for Raziel alone.
The entrance to the ‘under-city’ as Ajatar referred to it, was located at the base of the higher citadel which housed the original vampire Circle of Nine and the established clergy of the Wheel of Fate.
The doors to this district had not held and the wolves had gotten inside. By the time Kain arrived there were no survivors and the stench of death was almost overpowering. Wolves of all shapes, sizes and colours came hurling at them out of every conceivable hiding place. Disturbed from feasting on the corpses of their victims, their feral minds goaded them into attacking.
Even focused bursts through the gauntlet were not enough to curb their enthusiastic sorties.
Finally they came to the closed and sealed heavy stone door which Kain knew had to be the way he was seeking, marked as it was by the ancient symbol for ‘fire’. The smashed, broken and tipped over smith stalls around it immediately indentified it as a Serioli building.
Plastered on the nearby walls were crude images Kain recognised with a frown, the Wheel of Fate and the symbol of the False god. The imagery was crude and clearly drawn by those without much artistic flare, a graffiti intimidation of the occupants of the building who did not share in the beliefs of the mainstream culture.
Ajatar paid no need to them, her eyes forced rigidly away from the markings. Clearly she had seen it all before.
The door itself was scratched where the claws of the werewolves had been brought across in a futile attempt to slash their way inside.
Directly in the centre was the lock, a peculiar sort of mechanism with three holes vertically across the length of it.
He stared at it for a moment, before raising his right arm to look down at the gauntlet he still carried. Across the knuckles of this Serioli artefact were three spikes, perfectly sized and spaced to fit into those holes.
He raised his fist and slid them inside. Feeling a connection and hearing the satisfying click of a mechanism, Kain rotated his arm to the left and the latch of the stone door gave way.
There was a loud grinding noise and slowly the door slid apart.

“And so at last I came to the birthplace of the Reaver, Vorador’s workshop and forge where he had unknowingly crafted the sword which now contained the soul of my first born son.”

The forge was as much as he had seen in his vision, only now abandoned apparently in a hurry. Tables were tipped over and the great machine in the centre of the chamber quietly letting out jets of steam every couple of seconds.
Ajatar glanced up at the machine as she followed Kain inside, keeping up the rear in case anything else tried to follow.
“An elemental Forge.” She explained. “Vorador was an adapt pupil in the disciplines of Fire. It gathered the energies of Nature and Conflict to assist him in his forging.”
Kain waked up to the machine which stretched from the ceiling to the floor, with four different mould emplacements at regular intervals. Around the walls were wooden mannequins with various type of forged armour placed upon them.
With some amusement, Kain saw that one of those sets of armour was the Chaos Armour he had once used himself.
How many weapons and artefacts of Vorador’s making had he unknowingly used throughout the centuries?
When he came around the far side, he found one of the stone moulds broken on the floor. He knelt to push a few pieces of it back into line.
The mould indentation was in the shape of a serpentine blade. That confirmed it. This was indeed the place where Vorador had crafted the sword. He however was long gone, probably fleeing before Moebius’ army could unleash its wrath. There was much to be said for constructive cowardice.
But had he taken the Tablet with him? No… Kain knew Vorador well enough to know it had to still be here, hidden away in some cunning place.
He stood up and glanced around the chamber.
Connected to the massive boiler like forge by tilted troughs were large several silver vats, hung from the ceiling with nozzles on the underside that fed down into carts on rails. Ajatar was already over there, looking at him with a skeptical eye. From her expression Kain gathered that she did not know their purpose. Vorador more likely had been adding his own customised pieces to his equipment.
She reached out and turned the dial on the side of the nearest vat. Out the bottom, feeding into the cart bellow came a gelatinous red mixture Kain had seen Vorador using in his vision.
The smell of blood was so acute the aroma made him shiver.
Ajatar took a step back.
“Blood?” She asked.
No not just blood, Kain was quick to realise.
“And crushed bones.” He said coming over to examine it more closely. “Teeth to be exact.”
Ajatar paled unintentionally and glanced up with distaste towards the vats above her.
While she, with a mere few centuries of blood lust to contend with, was appalled; Kain was actually quite impressed with the ingenuity of such a mixture. He had known Vorador’s ring had been made of a strange metal crafted from blood and teeth but had everything he made been forged from this substance?
Maybe even the Reaver itself? Out of curiosity he held the sword out in front of him, studying the metal its blade was made of.
Suddenly his thoughts were interrupted by a rushing surge of noise. He swung about in time to see dust from the floors, from the walls and even from the forge itself sudden fling itself into the air.
The particles twisted and turned in a collection of small tornados, perhaps more than a dozen each one gathering the dust and coming together.
“What is this?!” Ajatar demanded, drawing her sword short blades in one fluid motion. Kain didn’t answer, he watched as the substance of the dust became solid and the enemies arrive.

“T’would seem my enemy had once again caught up with me.”

Homunculi… Kain counted about twenty three at first glance, five officer types and the rest centurions arms with blades and, more worryingly, longbows.
Their leader, an officer with more ornate armour than the rest of them raised its hand and wordless gestured towards the two vampires.
Responding again in silence, the soulless golems charged.