The two of them moved in silence for quite some time as they moved through the empty corridors of the Citadel. After this cold animosity that had grown between them became unbearable, Ajatar swung around to confront him.
Her golden eyes were ablaze with anger, lips drawn back over her fangs.
“Why didn’t you help him?!” She demanded, almost spitting in her anger. Kain did not meet her eyes just at that moment, drawing in a breath and setting his shoulders firmly.
Silence endured once more, the grandmaster keeping her expression of fierce anger and resentment fixed upon her face.
“There was nothing to be done.” Kain replied in a flat voice, almost dead. “His fate had been sealed long before I set out upon this road.”
Ajatar walked in front of him, her wings fluttering in her characteristic display of irritation, her feathers rustling against each other.
“What sort of reply is that?” The grandmaster asked of him, raising a talon to him threateningly. “You make excuses!”
Kain stared her down, his eyes locked on hers now that she was directly in front of him. Eventually she lowered her hand from him and half turned, still breathing heavily in anger.
“He was the Balance Guardian! We could have saved him!”
Kain just shook his head at her.
“No… no we could not.” He said, explaining as if he would to some inexperienced fledgling, know full well that when Ajatar became emotional she was not prone to reason. “The fact of this matter is indisputable.”
Despite his words however, it had taken a great deal of self control not to immediately rush to Ba’al’s aide. Feeding the Guardian to the wolves had been the victory of a coward and deprived of any honour whatsoever.
That self superior smirk on the young Moebius’ face had enflamed him and made him wish with all his soul that he had been free to charge straight out there and plunge the Reaver into his chest a second time.
“If he had not died here this day I would not even exist.” He contented himself by saying, comforted only by the fact that at least this was true.
Ajatar however was not to be consoled and paced away from him, her wings still rustling nosily.
“You speak gibberish!” She accused, but then stopped almost in mid thought and turned to look at him with piercing eyes. “Who … what are you Kain? Why are you even here?”
Kain’s expression slowly turned sardonic and he smiled.
“Would you believe me even if I told you?” He asked Ajatar’s face began to fill with a sort of an aching yearning, desperation for hope of any kind where there had been none before. Once again she could not quite bring herself to believe what she must surely suspect.
If she had had the tablets, even for a short about of time, she would know the importance of the Scion of Balance.
“Ba’al spoke to me of…” She started but then stopped. She drew in a deep breath, preparing herself to cross that line. “…of the one who would come in our twilight to seek the tablets.”
Kain smiled at her, a little more warmly than before.
“Why ask if you already know?”
Her expression turned awed for a moment and then she turned to hide her face, unwilling to betray herself in a moment of weakness. Kain pretended not to see as she collected herself, recovering her demeanour and calming her taught emotions.
“Now come… we have work to do.” He told her, striding past down the corridor. They had lingered here long enough. Kain knew he had to act quickly before the third Tablet of Dark Fable past beyond his reach.
“What work?” She asked after him. When Kain did not reply, she called after him again. “If you are who I think you are why do you do nothing to right the wrongs committed here?”
-
“She could not understand my purpose here was not to prevent preordained events but to understand them so that the future might not follow the same path. And I was not hypocritical enough to ask her to trust me, when I did not fully trust her.”
-
The invading Seraphim army were concentrating on flushing out any survivors in the Citadel’s labyrinthine underbelly and so had left the main castle like building that made the cities apex mostly alone, but the vision had showed him a chamber in this now ruined fortress and he knew it is there he must go.
Ajatar followed him, unable to do much else at this point. The city had been taken and as a soldier, her responsibility was also to retrieve the Tablets from the hands of her enemy and to deny them any advantage they could gain from their possession.
Ascending the tower like building, they did encounter a small group of Seraphim guards and their leashed werewolf.
Kain charged into their midst before they could cry out in alarm. The Reaver screamed, claiming the soul of the wolf and the men around him were carved by talons and blade. Blood and worse was splattered arose the walls and Ajatar watched him in his carnage mutely, unconcerned by the savagery or even flinched when he satisfied his hunger on a struggling man; draining him nearly completely of blood and then letting the limp corpse drop down to the ground.
He glanced back at her once as he whipped his mouth clean with the side of his wrist. She met his gaze once and then walked on past him, taking the lead.
And so it was she who entered that chamber first. Kain heard her hiss in alarm and then heard the rustle of her feathers as anger began to control her once again.
“YOU!” She began in a low, savage undertone.
Kain came into the room after her.
The chamber was the same one had had stood in before, watching over the ruined Pillars of Nosgoth just after his battle with the False God. In this era, the room was whole and the only way to see the outside was through the elaborate window facing around the outside.
Nine chairs stood in the centre of the room, forming a circle facing the window.
Standing there, looking around those windows towards the nine shafts of pure marble in the distance, was a young human dressed in red. He had slicked back, raven black hair and archaic golden armour across his arms and legs. Slowly he turned to face them and Kain recognised him instantly.
-
“And so once more I came face to face with my creator, the Necromancer Mortanius. I encountered him as I had never beheld him before; a young man, barely older than twenty five. Yet even when supported by the energies of youth his demeanour was one of grave detachment.”
-
Ajatar, with fierce determination, drew her two short blades her wings slowly spreading out either side.
“You…quisling.”  Her voice held more venom in it than Kain had ever heard her use. “Ba’al trusted you!” Before she could do something rash, the vampire walked forward to block her off.
Mortanius was here alone, with no escort or guards of any kind. Kain also did not see any sign of the tablet here at all. He frowned at this ominous scene before him.
The young necromancer regarded them both with no sign of recognition. As this was centuries before even the birth of his human life, Kain doubted Mortanious would know him.
“Have you ever wondered if, when you set yourself upon a course of action, if what you are doing is the right thing?” Mortanious asked then, his voice echoing in the vaulted chamber. “No matter how black and white the situation may seem?”  His eyes looked from Kain to Ajatar and back again.
“When I captured Ba’al…” He started and Kain had to put an arm out in front of the grandmaster to prevent her from rushing at him. “When I captured Ba’al it was strange.” The young necromancer carried on despite the interruption. “It was as if he knew I was coming and was waiting for me.”
Mortanious turned to pace along the wall, keeping his eyes fixed on the two of them.
“He put up no fight or struggle. He accepted his fate and waited merely for the brief chance to talk to me.”
“And why was that?” Kain asked in reply, matching the cold tone. Mortanious stopped and considered, as if unsure of his words.
“He told me…” He started, then shook his head and began to chuckle. His expression became amusingly confused, as if something had happened which had paradoxically shaken him and yet amused him at the same time. “He told me that he forgives me for what I was doing.” He said. “That no matter what I did or would do that I would always be his best and most treasured pupil.”
With a snarl, the grandmaster of the Serioli barged past Kain.
“And yet you betrayed him!” She accused. Mortanious tried for an unconcerned look but he was little more than a youth in this day and age and he did not pull it off very well, his inexperience causing him to take a reflective step backwards.
“Consider this from our perspective.” He said, perhaps a tad too quickly. “Humanity is treated like a slave race, there for the convenience of their overseers.”
The necromancer raised his arms up high and gestured around him to the citadel itself.
“We served you, helped build your cities and fight your wars.” He swung his arms down then in disgust. “Yet this was not enough. You came to our homes seeking blood to drink and even our children to steal… to be turned into monstrosities by the Audron.”  He shuddered involuntarily. “That would have been my own fate had I not acted.”
This he added almost in a whisper, before returning to full voice.
“If the circumstances were reversed and it was us doing the same to you… would you not rise up in opposition?”
Kain considered him.
“I already have.” The vampire said whimsically. Mortanious managed a half smile of his own.
“Then you understand us.”
“But do you?” Kain put in quickly and the young Necromancer frowned at him. “I see the doubt in your eyes and hear the uncertainty in your voice. Do you even believe in what you are doing?”
Mortanious breathed out through his nose and his shoulders slumped. Kain saw him now as he had never seen him before... a completely unsuited youth being thrust into a position he should never have to bare. The years would harden him considerably but Mortanious had started out small and afraid.
“Moebius has the conviction of his faith to help him excuse the butchery.” The necromancer said. “I do not have that same luxury.” Then he laughed, a sound with no mirth. “Is it not an absurd irony? The Guardian of Death does not enjoy killing?”
Kain shared in the joke, chuckling with him much to Ajatar’s annoyed dismay. Then the laughter stop and there was prolonged silence afterwards.
“But my own personal feelings do not matter.” Mortanious began, this time far more ominously. His upper body tilted forward and his hands moved out either side, fingers arched. “Once your kind might have been noble and majestic… but you are little more than a vermin pestilence now and the world will be well rid of you. “
“Enough banter, you traitor!” Ajatar declared. “You will pay for your deceit and your abandonment!”
“Indeed, enough of this.” Mortanious swung his arms out and instantly his entire form was surfaced with a pale sickly radiance. Kain could seen see the necromancer’s bones through his flesh as the light he was generating past down his arms and into his hands, culminating between his fingers.
“If you have come for my head, then by all means take it from me if you can!” The necromancer clapped his hands together in front of his chest and a pulsing wave of energy shot forth from his hands, passing out through the room. As it moved, astral figures seemed to conjure themselves out of thin air.
Ghosts and shades summoned from the underworld, crying out as if pain from being forced into physical form.
Torn from their spectral realm, these creatures were maddened and frenzied as Mortanious directed them forward to the attack.